


The Last Loop

by Strandenstein



Category: Re:ゼロから始める異世界生活 | Re:Zero Starting Life in Another World (Anime)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-29
Updated: 2021-01-10
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:22:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 28,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28409193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Strandenstein/pseuds/Strandenstein
Summary: The story of Subaru's last loop and the events immediately following its completion
Relationships: Emilia/Natsuki Subaru
Comments: 51
Kudos: 178





	1. A Day Without Envy

**Author's Note:**

> Suffering is a communist initiative, it is best when distributed equally and fairly among the people.

Emilia looked at the sight in front of her in adject horror, everything was falling apart. The Witch of Envy had showed up in the capital as all the candidates had gathered in preparation for the final vote to decide who would be the next ruler of Lugunica. The candidates and the camps should have been an unstoppable force, they had among them the greatest warriors from the entire kingdom. They had Wilhelm the Sword Demon, but for every shadow he slashed down, two more appeared. They had Reinhard the Sword Saint, but the Dragon Sword Reid which could fell 100 dragons with a single strike wasn’t even capable of leaving a scratch on the monstrosity before them. Even Roswaal L Mathers, the greatest magician in all Lugunica, throwing fireballs capable of incinerating entire cities, paled in comparison to the Witch of Envy.

The fight was nearing its conclusion, the capital was drenched in a sea of flames; however they were contrasted by thick black shadow that extended far past the cities outer walls. It looked nought like a city involved in a perilous battle, instead it looked like small boat barely floating in a massive sea of shadows.

However, their desperate yet seemingly futile struggle had a tiny silver lining; the majority of the capital’s residents had been given an opportunity to escape. The candidates and their benefactors sweated, bleed, and will probably die for their safety. Emilia will probably die for all the people who spat at her when she walked by, hurled insults and called her a monster to her face; but she will also die for people like the Appa Salesman and his family. Emilia will die so that his sweet little girl will get to wake up in a warm bed and hug her mom and dad, grow up with them, laugh and joke with them, have something that Emilia never had; and that was something that Emilia was willing to die for.

Emilia’s heart was being wretched at the sight in front of her, the broken remains of the combined fighting force of all the camps. Wilhelm lay on the ground a few dozen paces from her, his two swords snapped, and his legs contorted at odd angles thanks to a shattered pelvis. Emilia had watched as he slowly abandoned his frantic desire to try and stand, it’s likely that the blood that must be pooling in his abdomen from the shards of bone penetrating his intestines had finally reached sufficient levels to cause his consciousness to slip from reality. Although Emilia was mortified at his injuries she honestly felt a bit happy for him, Wilhelm had fought long and hard his entire life and he honestly deserved the respite she thought; he won’t be aware when he dies, he won’t experience being crushed by the shadow arms or swallowed by the sea, his life will just fade to nothing.

The rest of the fighting force was near Wilhelm’s condition, some slightly better than others. Reinhard was the best of all, yet he stood kneeling drenched in sweat, unable to move. With every divine blessing in the book and the endurance of a thousand men; even he had exerted himself to the point of such exhaustion that he could no longer gather the strength to even stand. Julius and Crusch were the worst of the bunch, Julius lay on the ground writhing in pain as Anastasia held him down as Felt tried to bandage the stumps where his four limbs had been brutally ripped by the many shadow hands filling the plaza. Crusch lay near the edge of the plaza, impaled in several places by the broken water grate she had been flung into. With her was Felix who was desperately dumping healing magic in her body, it took his full power just to keep her to clinging to life, but Felix didn’t dare to remove her from the water grate as it was likely that the second he stopped healing her that she would simply die from the massive trauma she had sustained.

Emilia honestly wanted to help her friends, she truly did, but her own injuries had accumulated to the point that she no longer could. The second they saw the Witch of Envy it had immediately targeted Subaru, dashing straight at him with arms outstretched; like it was trying to take him away rather than simply kill him. However, Emilia wouldn’t allow any harm to come to her knight, he had gone through so much for her back when she was weak; but now that she was strong, she would protect him, she would shield him from harm. But she wasn’t strong enough for as she swung her hammer of ice straight at the witches head a hand of shadow formed and caught it, swinging it wide around herself like a child’s toy before coming back around and slamming straight into Emilia’s chest. She flew back right through a brick wall and felt a series of _snaps_ followed by a sharp pain as all the ribs in her left side broke off and plunged into her lung. As the blood travelled up her throat and started to dribble down her chin, it was like all the pain just disappeared, Subaru must have used _Cor Leonis_ she had thought. She had seen his face soaked in worry as he saw her laying with blood running out of her mouth, but as she stood up, he doubled over in pain and grasped his chest.

But Subaru was still Subaru after all, when Emilia tried to rush over to him, he just forced out a smile and said “Don’t worry Emilia-tan I’ll be okay, so show everyone how strong you’ve become!”

But since Subaru was a dunderhead who would rather break every bone in his body before he would let Emilia bare a single scratch it was Beatrice who gave her the reassurance to fight. All she had to do was give Emilia a nod from where she stood beside Subaru, holding his hand. That little nod delivered the only message Emilia needed to hear, “Betty will make sure Subaru doesn’t push himself too hard, in fact.”

And fight hard Emilia did, with every ounce of strength she could give, and even more that she probably couldn’t give. Yet it wasn’t enough as there was just one shadow arm she didn’t manage to avoid, and that arm spelt the end of her fight. It grabbed the top of her skull and like before it swung her in a wide arc towards the edge of a well.

Emilia’s life flashed before her eyes as her head neared the well, in but a mere few seconds her skull would hit the large stone bricks and shatter, spreading her brain across the plaza for all to see. The last second before impact seemed to slow down and last forever; as this happened images of her time with Fortuna, Geuse, and Subaru flashed before her eyes, memories that she never wanted to forget. Yet just as she embraced the end the shadow grasping her skull was dispersed by a blade of wind, and from the corner of her eye she saw a head of pink hair slam into her.

Ram had managed to save her from a grisly end, Ram the rough yet kind maid who had been with Emilia since the beginning of the adventure with the royal selection had put herself into harms way for the umpteenth time to help Emilia.

As Emilia careened along a different trajectory than the one ending with her death she was wrapped with guilt. Rams own trajectory led her right over the well, and due to saving Emilia she had no time to break her own fall, and with a sickening _crack_ Ram hit the ground and remained motionless.

Emilia herself slammed headfirst into the outer wall of the plaza and felt a series of cracks spread across her entire skull.

And so she was relegated to simply watching, she was wrapped in a sense of guilt and uselessness as she could merely watch as one by one her friends fell or were ripped apart by the monster that was the Witch of Envy, a monster that Emilia had been compared to her whole life.

She wanted to cry out, to scream to Subaru that he needed to run and leave with the rest of the support team. Subaru, Felt, Anastasia, Otto and Felix could do nothing to stop the witch, they should save themselves and anybody close by and live to fight another day. That’s what Emilia wanted to say at least but nothing more then a murmur or gurgling sound could escape her lips; her second impact of the fight had shattered her jaw. And so the battered Emilia could do nothing more than watch everyone’s upcoming death with her jaw hanging open, blood dribbling out of her mouth and running down her chin, and even more blood escaping her skull and running down from all sides of her head like water down a glass window on a stormy day.

And so, Emilia lay slumped there as the blood began to dye her vision red and everything grew more and more hazy, just as she felt herself slipping into a sleep that would probably be her last, she was jolted to life. A pain worse than death had beset her, the pain of her injuries had returned, _Cor Leonis_ had faded.

_Cor Leonis_ had evolved since the events of the Pleidies Watch Tower, now it not only allowed the sharing of burdens between Subaru and the rest but also allowed anyone connected via it to ‘feel’ the status of others who shared the connection. This meant that anyone connected to this network of _Cor Leonis_ could think about anyone else connected, then things like how tired they were or if they had any injuries should pop into their head in detail. It was because of this they had taken on the Witch of Envy in two teams, a combat-oriented team and a support team, the support team being made up of non-combatants who aided the combat team.

Emilia sucked in a deep breath and tried to get her pain addled brain to focus, she had been lost in a haze thinking about how she had arrived at this hopeless situation, but she hadn’t been thinking about how she could get out of this situation.

“Things feel really fuzzy, but I have a bit of mana left so I could probably cast some weak magic. It may not be much but if I can still help, I’m going to do my best to help!” But than what happened in front of her eyes made her freeze up in shock, it was the last thing she wanted to see.” No Subaru why you aren’t running, you could get away and live, but you’re going towards the witch. You’re too weak to do anything so please leave and live!” This was at least what Emilia wanted to say but her injuries rendered it into a meaning less series of incomprehensible sounds. She tried with all her strength to communicate this to him, but she could do nothing but watch in horror as her knight walked forward seemingly to his death.

But something seemed off about what he was doing, she saw no fear in him, no rage or anger, not even envy at how much stronger the witch was compared to him. He walked towards the witch with what looked like a pitied and kind look on his face, it was like his scary eyes felt bad for the witch that was about to kill all his friends.

Emilia moved her eyes to scan the plaza, to see how their allies and friends thought of this spectacle, those who seemed to still be conscious of their surroundings at least. Ram and Felix looked absolutely enraged at the spectacle, “no don’t hate him, he’s doing this for us, there’s no way that he’s this friendly with the witch!” Emilia wanted to plead with them. She kept looking around until her eyes settled on Beatrice and Roswaal, both frozen in shock and immobilized by mana deprivation. “So not even those two know what he’s up to…” Emilia realized as her heart sunk, meaning that Subaru might be trying to sacrifice himself. It had always bothered Emilia with how little regard for his own life he had, if someone didn’t step in when he planned something than he would always take the most dangerous place in any plan for himself. If Beatrice didn’t seem to know what he was doing than it was likely that he was about to do something really dumb and get himself hurt since she surely would’ve stopped him if she knew.

Subaru kept his calm walk and when he was nought but a few paces from the witch he just opened his arms and hugged her. Even the witch seemed shocked by this, but her shock didn’t last long. Nearly immediately every shadow arm that had been either idle or fighting the few who could still stand rushed back towards Subaru.

Emilia gasped, she was about to see her knight get crushed to death by hundreds if thousands of shadow arms, even one was strong enough to kill Emilia with its swing. But what surprised her the most was that the arms didn’t crush him, instead they gently held him with such care and diligence that it seemed they were juxtaposed by being afraid of accidently crushing him but also afraid that he’d be gone forever if he slipped out from their grasp. The witch herself seemed to be enraptured by immense excitement, it was swaying side to side saying nothing but “love you, love you, love you” over and over again.

It was like her pain didn’t bother her at all, she was so captivated by the sight in front of her that she couldn’t focus on her body at all, but seeing this was starting to make her heart ache. Why was Subaru showing so much love to the witch? How could he act so intimate with her and not show the slightest hesitation or embarrassment, it was like it was natural for him.

Emilia’s heart filled with jealousy, with envy towards the witch representing that very sin. She watched as her heart raged and burned, as she felt jealous to extents that she never had before; as she saw HER knight, the one who had repeatedly declared his love for HER, lean forward and kiss the WITCH, whisper comforting words into the WITCHES ear.

As Emilia was drowning in her own uncharacteristic jealousy and envy she didn’t give a single thought on why Subaru was doing what he was. Why he was showing such kindness and intimacy to a being that had been ostracized its entire life, why he might give it a reason to let go of its envy. Emilia was behaving eerily similar to Subaru during their first visit to the capital, drowning in envy and possessiveness over another without ever thinking to themselves “why?”

But she clued back into the spectacle unfolding before her, she had come back to reality and realized that she certainly had missed something important. The shadows that had been engulfing Subaru’s body, holding him near to the Jealous Witch had begun to fade, they grew more and more transparent before simply ceasing to exist.

Emilia once again scanned the plaza and the same held true for the rest of the shadows, even the very sea of shadow that had seemed verged to swallow the city whole grew weaker and weaker before fading to nothingness.

When her eyes returned to focus once again on the witch and her knight what drew her attention was not how the witch was now being cradled in his arms, unable to stand on her own. No it was how the face that was once obscured by a veil of shadow was now free for her to see.

“I-It’s me…..” was all that ran through her head. The Witch of Envy looked like exactly like her, if you said they were identical twins or even replicas of one another it would be a hard claim to dispute.

But Emilia’s fixation on her apparent doppelgänger was cut short. She saw a shift in the witches face, the previous obsession in its eyes was replaced by a soft kindness and a weak smile, like the person inside the body itself changed.

“This must be Satella than, so Subaru was right about her not being the same as the Witch of Envy. But wait what was that I heard?”

As Emilia came to the realization that the theory Subaru told her a fair amount of time ago that seemed completely crazy, that Satella and the Witch of Envy were not the same person, she had thought she heard Satella weakly say a few words. She thought she heard “Thank you, for keeping your promise.”

“When did he make a promise with her? How did he make a promise with her? What did he promise her?” all these thoughts raced through Emilia’s head as she watched an even more drastic change occur with the witch’s body.

A strange black light seemed to seep out from her, yet it soon grew into a torrent but than vanished, and with it went Satella’s body. The body of the witch blew away like ash in the wind. With the vanquishing of the witches body so went all the despair and sorrow among the candidates and their camps, they had stared death in the eye and he blinked first, they would live.

“Had they done it, had they beaten the Witch of Envy, was the monster that Emilia been compared to her whole life finally been truly defeated?”

All these thoughts raced through Emilia’s head as she felt joy for the first time that day since the capital was attacked, she didn’t care how hurt she was if it meant that they’d saved the capital from being consumed by shadow. It didn’t even bother her anymore how Subaru defeated her, he managed to save them from a death by a being that not even Reinhard’s raw power could overcome.

The looks on her companions faces seemed to echo her sentiment, the looks of anger, shock, and worry were replaced with amazement and joy. They would all get to live another day and after the royal selection was concluded maybe, just maybe they could all just honestly enjoy each others company as friends instead of rivals, without another care in the world.

But Emilia was sucked out of her dream of everyone being friends and happy together when she caught sight of Beatrice and Roswaal. Beatrice had recovered her strength but was desperately trying to crawl towards Subaru while Roswaal held her back. Emilia started to try and focus in on this odd interaction between the two, maybe it was due to blood loss but her mind was feeling really hazy, making it hard for her to figure out what was happening between the two.

Beatrice seemed to be pleading with Roswaal, not even bothering to use her normal speaking techniques or habits, “Just let me go, let me help him, he needs Betty’s help right now!”

And Roswaal was also responding without his normal pronunciation, but with a cold caluculating voice “The miasma coming off him would kill even you; the boy would be unable to live with himself if you died for him. All we can do now is watch and hope, maybe he will live, maybe not”

“Who were they talking about, why was there a boy giving off miasma?” Emilia tried to work out the answer to these questions, but her mind was just too hazy to help her here. By this point her left eye was so drenched in blood running from her head that she couldn’t see the left half of her field of vision. She painstakingly and slowly turned her head, the fractures causing her immense pain. What she saw broke her more than any injury she had.

Emilia’s knight Natsuki Subaru, the boy who had been one of her closest companions since her adventure to become the Queen of Lugunica had begun, looked like he was dying. He lay on the ground rolling and thrashing like he was in the worst pain in his life, yet he didn’t make a sound. His arms held onto his neck and clawed deep into his skin, letting streams of red blood run out. It was like he was being strangled from the inside, and was so desperate to breath that he was willing to tear into his own throat to get at it.

Emilia’s gaze continued along his body to see his face and now she understood what Roswaal was saying about miasma. Dark thick clouds of miasma were flowing out from his mouth and pouring from his nostrils, black circles were forming around his eyes as if the miasma was building up behind them, on the verge of surging out at any moment. The miasma began to surge at a vastly higher rate from his mouth and nostrils, it burst out from behind his eyelids, than and only than did Natsuki Subaru stop struggling and lay still, his body fully being shrouded in the miasma that was spilling forth from him.

Emilia wanted to call his name; but she couldn’t speak.

Emilia wanted to rush to his side; but she couldn’t move.

Emilia wanted to remember his strength; but her mind was in a deep fog.

Emilia wanted to watch his final movements; but her consciousness slipped away.

* * *

Emilia lay in her bed in Roswaal’s mansion, warm and snug under her blankets. If she could choose than she would lay like this forever if she could have the chance. However, something was bothering her.

“Hmmmmh, I don’t wanna get up, Puck hasn’t woken me so it must not be time yet”

_Click Click Click_

“Something is on the tip of my tongue, something realllly important happened but I just can’t remember it”

_Click Click Click_

“What’s this sound? Is that Ram or Rem walking outside the door, their shoes don’t normally sound that loud?”

_Click Click Click_

Emilia slowly got out of bed and began walking towards the door, every step lifting the sleepy haze from her head ever so slightly. But the clicking sound from right outside the door continued in its steady rhythm, building to the point that she felt it inside her own head.

Emilia finally reached the door and threw it open with uncharacteristic aggression. What met her was not one of the mansions maids pacing outside but instead a blinding light.

* * *

Emilia blinked away the blinding light and was met by a head of blue hair, Rem.

Emilia remembered Rem; when Rem had suffered at the hands of Gluttony, they had journeyed to the watch tower at the edge of the world, to the Pleidies Watchtower in order to ask the sage for help in restoring her name and memories. Although it hadn’t gone to plan they had at least retrieved her name, meaning Rem woke up and everyone else was able to remember her, just Rem was never able to recall her lost memories consumed by Gluttony. Emilia remembered Subaru’s bittersweet reaction when he finally accepted that although Rem was awake, his Rem would never return to him.

“Wait…. Subaru!” Emilia tried to press herself off the ground to her feet. The image of Subaru suffocating to death while being swallowed by the very miasma that was bursting out from within his own body. She needed to help him, Subaru was her knight and had been there for her throughout some of her hardest trials. He had rarely asked for her help even when he needed it the most, but it was painfully obvious to her from that horrible memory of him thrashing around in his death throes that now was certainly one of those times.

But as she tried to press herself up, she fought against a terrible headache in her head, and soreness in her ribcage. She didn’t let this stop her, but it didn’t matter, a pair of small and delicate yet immensely strong hands were placed on her shoulders and easily held her down in her weakened state.

“Emilia-sama please don’t try to get up, I’ve pieced your skull back together, but you need to rest, or the wounds may reopen.” Rem calmly but forcefully told the chosen candidate of her lord, Roswaal. “I apologize for my rudeness, but it took the very last of all of our mana to bring everyone back from the brink of death, we don’t have the capabilities to heal any more injuries.” As Rem said this, she hung her head in shame at her inability to fulfill Emilia’s wish.

But Emilia was still driven by desperation, the terrible memory burned into her mind just wouldn’t let her stop looking for answers, she needed to find him, she needed to know that he was safe. Driven by this desperation she hurriedly looked for someone who would know, someone who could tell her that he was safe.

Her desire was met when her eyes settled on Beatrice. The great spirit sat huddled alone in the plaza quietly sobbing with her head pressed into her knee’s.

“Beatrice, where’s Subaru” Emilia called out in desperation.

“…….Gone……..” choked out Beatrice quietly between sobs.

“Gone? What do you mean Beatrice? Where did Subaru go? Where was he taken?” Emilia cried out, growing more and more desperate with every word.

Beatrice’s head shot up at Emilia’s words and looked at her right in the eyes, fully showing her the tears that ran down her face and yelled back at her with a mixture of anger, dread, and sadness as if she simply couldn’t manage her own emotions anymore. “I DON’T KNOW I SUPPOSE! DEAD, LOST, BOTH? THE CONTRACT BETWEEN US IS GONE SO BETTY DOESN’T KNOW WHAT THE WITCH DID WITH HIM! And with that Beatrice returned to her former state of crying into her knee’s, as if mourning her now lost contractor.

Emilia froze up at this, Natsuki Subaru was gone and very possibly dead, and not a single one among them knew or was currently in a position to find out what happened to him. So once again, and for the second time in this timeline that Subaru had cultivated, Emilia retreated into her mind, unable to handle the loss and turbulent state of her emotions. She stayed frozen in place, not moving a muscle from the position Rem had held her in. She didn’t move when the Karsten men that had been evacuating civilians came to move their group to the Karsten mansion. She didn’t move when she was placed in a bed. She didn’t move for over several days and nights.

It wasn’t until some of the most unexpected people entered her room that she left her catatonic and depressed haze. Julius Euclius entered with Garfiel Tinsel, both supporting the still battered Crusch Karsten. Of course, Julius and Garfiel had also suffered grievous injuries, possibly worse than Crusch herself but for reasons unknown to Emilia no healing magic had or ever would allow Crusch to recover completely. But the reason they had come was not out of despair but hope, they had come because they refused to believe the official statement, that Sir Natsuki Subaru had given his life to prevent the Second Great Calamity.

“Emilia-sama, I don’t believe Natsuki Subaru would like the look you have on your face” proclaimed Crusch from her position of being supported by Garfiel’s and Julius’s shoulders. Her face contorted in pain as her broken body was lowered into a chair setup to face Emilia’s bed. She wasn’t done yet however, “Just because the Margrave declared to the council of wise men that your knight gave his life to vanquish the Jealous Witch doesn’t mean its true.”

Now this statement caught Emilia’s attention and for the first time in days her angelic bell like voice could be heard, “You mean to say that there’s a chance that he’s alive? That there’s a chance that we can get Subaru back?”

As Emilia spoke tears started to form around the rims of her eyes, but her voice held hope. Hope that one day she would be able to be reunited with Subaru.

The young knight who had continually given everything for her.

The one who had on numerous times proclaimed his willingness to spend the rest of his life by her side.

The one who she had accepted to spend the rest of her life with just days before the witch attacked.

Crusch had one final statement to give, a promise to the man who had saved her and her men from certain death at the hands of the White Whale, an event where someone so weak saved those who should have been too strong to ever need his help, from a monster which should have been too powerful for him to have done anything against. “I can’t promise anything, just that we believe that Natsuki Subaru could not have fallen in battle. We believe that he still stands among the living, somewhere in this world.”

It was these words that placed a tiny fire in Emilia’s now icy heart, gave her the little push to continue on the path that she had begun on so long ago. Although she did truly believe Crusch’s words, there was always going to be a tiny seed of doubt in her mind that gently yet constantly whispered. “He’s gone forever.”

And so, from the room that three had entered, four left. They resolved to find the hero who had all helped them in the time of their greatest need, just the question was would this resolve hold.

* * *

Today was the day of the Royal Selection, and it was occurring not but a few days after the witch’s attack. And so as Emilia walked down the streets there were not only the crowds gathered in excitement over the choosing of the next ruler, but also construction teams that had been hard at work for the past several days trying to repair the vast damages caused by the witch.

But right now, none of that was on Emilia’s mind, at this point there was nothing she could due to influence the result of the selection. The selection was too close and although the results were unknown, they must be set in stone and would be revealed to all the candidates in a few hours.

Emilia was now walking down an alley; this alley didn’t mean too much to her specifically, but it had an unusual importance to Subaru. Every time they had visited the capital after the first selection meeting, he had specifically requested to take some time to come and visit this place. And whenever she had asked him why this place held such a special place in his heart, he had simply said, “This is where you saved me Emilia-tan!”

His voice playing in her mind still sent a pang through her heart, it reminded her of the last promise he made to her, and how he was now missing and unable to fulfil it.

But she pushed this out of her mind, she had arrived in front of what she was looking for, a plaque commissioned by Roswaal. The plaque was made of an unknown black metal with bronze glyphs and detailing adorning it.

The plaque had a depiction of Subaru’s face above a short paragraph briefly describing both his significance and the significance of this spot.

_It was here that the adventure of Natsuki Subaru; Destroyer of the Witches Cult, Slayer of the White Whale, and Vanquisher of the Witch of Envy; began._

This was not the only move Roswaal had made immediately following the witch’s demise. He had hired town criers to travel around and spread the news of Subaru’s deeds, even spreading the official story that he had given his life to defeat the Witch of Envy, finally he had them emphasis that Natsuki Subaru had served as Emilia’s knight. By doing this he attached Subaru’s supposed sacrifice to Emilia’s name, thereby tying his already well known and new deeds to her election campaign. The most significant of these was the witch’s destruction, which finally separated her from that very witch and left her viewed not as a devil but an angel in the eyes of the people.

Of course these actions left a bad taste in the mouth of nearly everyone in the various camps involved in the royal selection, they all thought it was wrong of him to use Subaru’s death, whether they believed it or not, into political currency. Although these actions put his candidate in the place of being the most likely to be elected, it also isolated him from not only the other camps, but also most of his own camp. Roswaal L Mathers was once more alone in the world besides the 3 maids who continued to serve him.

* * *

And so, the 5 camps attended the final meeting of the Royal Selection many years after the first but with a mark upon them that showed all the hardships they had faced to reach this point. Some bore this mark physically, such as Crusch who had her body so thoroughly broken that she was now incapable of standing on her own. Others bore them mentally such as Emilia who had lost her childlike innocence and had finally come to embrace that the world was a dark and cruel place. And than there were the three who had stood with them years ago but do so no longer; Aldabaran had been killed after being uncovered as the Sin Archbishop of Pride, Subaru who had been lost in the process of stopping the Witch of Envy from destroying the Capital in a Second Great Calamity, and finally Beatrice who had simply gotten up and walked out of the Karsten mansion without a single word.

And so the five candidates stood before the council of wise men as they waited to hear who would take the throne, but this moment was not to be filled with joy and celebration as they had predicted all those years ago, but one of melancholy and regret as each candidate came to the realization of what they had lost to reach this moment.

And so, one candidate stepped forward at the call of their name and knelt before the wise men as a crown was gently placed on her head. When she and turned to face the crowd of nobility and knights arrayed before her, tears formed in her eyes. These were not tears of joy but regret and guilt, regret and guilt at all she had taken and sacrificed to reach this moment.

Regret and guilt over the suffering and hardships her followers had to endure to get her there.

Regret and guilt over the part of her that was lost forever to reach this point.

Regret and guilt over not being strong enough to save the people she wanted to most.

Emilia, just Emilia was now Emilia, Queen of Lugunica.


	2. The March of Time

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I wrote this I assumed that having demihuman (beastman?) blood results in a much extended lifespan, as well I assumed that having a witch factor will lengthen ones lifespan. These may be true or may not be but just to be sure, assume they are for this to make any sense whatsoever

Emilia sat on a bench outside of the mansion, gently humming to herself while basking in the warm sun. On the ring finger of one hand was a simple yet elegant ring the represented the promise she had made to the one who sat beside her, the commitment to spend the rest of her life with him. With her other hand she played with a similar ring adorning her partners hands. As she gently spun and played with it her face broke into an angelic smile, remembering the happiness of a few days ago when they had made their vows and exchanged these rings. Of course, such a promise was prohibited by the rules of royal selection, the candidates were not to make vows of marriage until one had been selected to rule. Waiting shouldn’t have been an issue for her as she would live on for hundreds of years thanks to the elven blood running through her veins. Waiting shouldn’t have been an issue for him as he would have his lifespan extended to match hers thanks to the many witch factors residing within him. But the two couldn’t wait and so choose to live with a little white lie, they would hide their rings outside the mansion and when hosting visitors. Once the selection ended, they would hold another ceremony where they would officially be married.

Emilia looked up to stare into her partners eyes with the angelic smile still gracing her face. But her gaze could never reach his eyes no matter how hard she focused for his face was covered by a deep shadow, extending down from his hairline to his chin.

“Emilia-tan is angelic as always, truly EMT!” He declared shouted as he seemingly basked in the angelic light given off by his partner. Emilia could only smile and blush at this statement, one that she heard often but never ceased to embarrass her.

She reached up towards his face to caress it with her delicate hand. But just as her hand pierced the shadow cloaking his face, she blinked and the world around her changed in an instant.

Emilia had woken up.

She was no longer sitting on a bench in the warm sunlight, accompanied by her loving partner, but alone in a cold bedroom.

Such an occurrence was not uncommon for her, she often dreamed of the times before she was crowned queen, times so long ago, 80 years to be exact.

It was almost a nightly occurrence for her to see some image of Subaru, but the shadow was always covering his face, except in one specific dream. The only time when Emilia was able to see the face of the one, she had once promised herself to was when the terrifying scene of him dying on the ground, being consumed by shadows that burst forth from and strangled his body. The time when he needed her most, yet she was too weak from her wounds to even move to help him.

But Emilia had come to realize that it was a disservice to everyone who had suffered to get her to this point if she moped in deep depression, as she had in the Karsten mansion. She may have spent everyday shadowed by a cloud of melancholy, but she made sure that this stayed with her, there wasn’t anyone close enough to her anyway that she would even consider sharing her feelings with.

“Just there…………. perfect!” Emilia exclaimed as she stood in front of the mirror. She had just finished the last step of her morning routine, getting her smile just perfect.

Emilia had never truly smiled since that day, but she knew that it was unbecoming of a queen to look sad or melancholic all the time. So every morning she stood in front of the mirror until she got her smile just right, so that every morning she could leave her room with the same smile that made Subaru swoon for her, even if there was no longer any meaning or happiness behind it.

Emilia’s life as queen was a far cry from what she expected, while it was one of power, it was also restricted. With a single word she could change the entire will of the nation of Lugunica, but the palace administrators rarely allowed her to leave their sight, and even more rarely allowed her to leave the walls of the capital city. While Emilia was constantly surrounded by hordes of servants and advisors, she constantly had an inner emptiness, she felt more alone than even when she unfroze in the Elior forest because at least than she had Puck.

Emilia’s days as queen were often much and altogether the same. Every morning she would get ready, eat breakfast, and than read the various reports that had been prepared for her the previous evening. These reports were often quiet dull ranging from riveting topics like agricultural production to changes in weather patterns. After reading the reports it would often be around lunchtime, giving Emilia some respite from the mind-numbing drudgery of data tables and graphs. Her afternoons were generally spent in the throne room either consulting with her advisors, holding audiences with her subjects, or laying out a new directive she wanted to implement in Lugunica. After her last meal of the day she would spend her time communing with spirits in the palace gardens or researching in the palace’s great libraries.

It was this research that concerned the administrators that oversaw the palace the most, for Emilia was researching into the still taboo subject that was the Witch of Envy. Even after 80 years she had not given up on finding her knight Subaru, she had convinced herself long ago that he didn’t die that day to the witch and along with 3 other companions had promised to do everything she could to find him. However, since Emilia’s freedom of movement was vastly restricted by the rules of others, she did what she could to help in other ways. She herself tried her best to learn about the witches power in an effort to determine what exactly had been done to her knight that day, so that she may use this knowledge to reverse whatever cruel spell had been cast on him. While Emilia did this, she had a huge collection of informants that constantly combed both Lugunica and the neighboring kingdoms for any clue on where her Subaru may have gone.

Of course, there were sometimes crisis’ that required her immediate attention and so she would have to throw her schedule out the window to deal with them. She always dealt with the kingdoms matters with as much diligence as she could muster; to the point that the dragon kingdom had few major issues, and when they did crop up, they were promptly dealt with. After her many decades of rule the people of her kingdom had come to adore her, they saw her happy façade and diligent work; taking it to the point where they showered her with admiration as the “Angel Queen”. But nobody outside the palace ever saw her true self behind the mask, the one that only came out after a particularly bad dream or memory surfaced.

* * *

While Emilia ate breakfast that day her eyes settled on a painting that hung on the wall, a painting of the Elior forest. However, this painting didn’t depict the frozen landscape that she had awoken from, instead it depicted a lush and vibrant forest full of life. Arrayed in front of the thriving wildlife was the collection of Elves that had stood there frozen for over a hundred years at the time of the painting’s creation. At the centre was a half-elf, depicted at being full of joy and absolutely elated after finally freeing her kin using the power of the dragon blood she had gained after winning the throne. But Emilia knew that the painting was a lie.

She remembered vibrantly that after the elation her kin felt from being awakened from the ice an uneasy and awkward air fell over them. They felt extreme mistrust and fear towards her because everyone in the village knew that there was only one among them who was capable of that level of ice magic, and that person was the same as the one who had just freed them. And so, after Emilia received their awkward thanks, she had departed the elven village completely consumed by guilt, never returning to that forest ever again.

And so with a heavy sigh Emilia stood up and said to herself “I guess I’m done now…..”

And as Emilia left the dining room to head off to her study to begin the days work, she was followed by the worried eyes of the younger of the two maids who had been present with her. The occasional moments where Emilia’s melancholy broke through the joyous façade, she wore always caused concern among any newer staff that had yet to grasp her mental state. They worried for the health and state of their queen when they caught sight of a barely touched meal, an empty stare into the distance when she was lost in her memories, or even the occasional tear when something reminded her of a friend who had passed long ago.

The young maid who had been frozen in worry for her queen was soon broken by her older and more experienced co-worker’s hand on her shoulder.

“I wouldn’t give her much thought when she’s acting like that if you want to last long here.” She said, pausing briefly before continuing, “She’s been like that ever since I started working here, and from what I heard, even before I was born.”

It was at this that the younger maid looked at her compatriot with surprise and curiosity.

“How old is she than? She doesn’t look a day over 20?”

The older maid continued after checking that none of the palace administrators had entered the room. Even if the Queen wouldn’t be upset by such a topic it was likely that the administrators would see it as rude and dismiss them both for such a severe breach of curtesy.

“From what I’ve heard she is within a decade or two of being 200 years old.”

This news shocked the younger maid, even though she had heard of elves and half-elves having long life spans she had never truly comprehended what that meant until she had seen it with her own eyes. But than with a voice filled with almost pity she continued with her questions, “So …. You mean to say that she’s spent an entire human lifetime trying to hide her pain from everyone at the palace?” As the last of these words left her lips the younger maid looked down as she truly comprehended that something terrible must have happened to make someone as broken as her queen seemed to be.

“From what I’ve heard, yes, she’s like this ever since her election 80 years ago. If you’re willing to listen to what’s probably an old woman’s gossip, there’s a bit more to the story I can tell you.” The older maid put down the tray that the nearly untouched meal had been loaded onto it and pulled out a chair, gesturing to another chair to indicate that the younger maid should sit down, it was going to be a long story.

“Now keep in mind that this may just be idle gossip, rumour passed down through the staff of the palace over the many decades, so please be at least a bit skeptical. So, many decades ago a man named Julius-sama used to visit the palace about four times a year. He seemed to get along quiet well with the Queen, whenever he would visit, she would usher him into her study and lock the door, not allowing any of us to enter to serve tea or other refreshments. These visits continued for many years, even as this Julius-sama grew so old that he had trouble walking and would have to stay here for a day or two of rest before departing again.” The older maid took a break to let her junior process the first part of the story.

“Was he her lover? Did something happen to him?” The younger made posed these cliché questions, thinking she was beginning to decipher the mystery of her Queen.

“No, well at least I don’t think that he was her lover, but the idea that a lover was involved is the general belief we’ve come up with.” She than paused and began delivering the next piece of the story, “The Queen also used to frequent a mansion of a noble house here in the capital, but her visits there were well before I began working here. These occurred well over 50 years ago, but they were like Julius’ visits. If my memory serves me correctly my mentor said it was the residence of one of the past heads of house Karsten, Crusch-sama I think. The Queen would visit with as few maids and knights in her procession as possible and when she arrived would meet with this Crusch-sama nearly alone with only Crusch’s healer present in the room with them.” The older maid than paused once again to let her junior absorb this portion of the story.

“This is starting to sound very suspicious; I’ve heard the rumours of Emilia-sama locking herself in the library while she researches topics relating to…” The young maid than hesitated a bit before continuing, “ ….. The Witch of Envy, could she be one of the cultists that were wiped out long ago?”

The older maid remained calm at this accusation of heresy towards their Queen, but she spoke in a firmer voice than normal to correct and remind her junior of what was and wasn’t too far. “No there’s no way Emilia-sama has anything to do with the Witch Cult of yore, if you were to read any history book than you would know that her camp was instrumental in its destruction, her own knight being particularly distinguished with accolades related to its defeat.” The older maid than thought for a bit on how to bring her junior back onto the right track. “I personally believe that it has something to do with someone in the painting she has put up in her study, the one that shows all the candidates and their camps together and all happy looking, if you know the one that I mean?”, than waiting briefly to receive a nod of acknowledgment she continued. “So, every few years we take all the paintings here in the palace and move them around, to make things seem fresh, especially since our liege is likely to be here for a few more centuries at the very least. But there’s something special about that painting because she’s never let it be moved, ever. It was first put up in her study when she took the throne and she has absolutely refused to let it be put up elsewhere, even when we take it down to clean the wall behind it she will be there to make sure that nobody damages it or misplaces it.”

The younger maid seemed to be understanding things now, “So you think that there’s someone in that painting that meant a lot to her, and that’s the only painting she has of them?”

The older maid than nodded to show how the younger maid was correct, “Yes exactly, but we can’t figure out who it was in that picture that she was so attached to. And frankly at this point this theory has bounced around from so many people and has so little hard evidence that it’s a bit crazy to take it seriously.” But seeing the curiosity in the eyes of the younger maid she relented and gave one last breadcrumb for her to follow. “There’s one more thing that could help you if you decide to finally get to the bottom of the mystery surrounding our Queen’s sadness. I heard that in the earliest days of Julius’ visits he was accompanied by a young knight that you should have heard about, Garfiel Tinzel-sama.”

Finally hearing a name, she recognized the young maid shot up with hope, “Yes how could I not know of one of the kingdoms greatest knights! Tinzel-sama is famous for singlehandedly defending villages from vollachian raids, or freeing helpless villagers from the grasps of cruel bandits!”

The older maid continued now that she knew the younger maid was following, “Well Tinzel-sama was still a young man during these visits and stopped coming long before Julius did, but he’s the only person besides the Queen who could answer the question on what caused her to become like this. Since he is the only person in that painting that I can both recognize and is still alive; but he is rarely seen in the capital these days, preferring the wilds and frontiers of the nations. If you ever see him and can work up the courage to ask him, not to mention catching him without any administrators around, than I’m sure that will be the best bet in getting the answers you seek.”

And with that the older maid picked up her tray, the younger maid following close behind her filled with determination that she would be the one to finally find a way to help her Queen, so that she didn’t need to suffer for the centuries to come.

* * *

Emilia sat down in her desk with a huff and started to flip through the sole report in front of her, a stack of about 20 pages bound together describing the agricultural output of the Mathers domain over the past annum. It was definitely going to be a boring read, so Emilia propped her head up with one arm as she slowly flipped through it. She made a habit of wanting to know information on ever region of Lugunica so that she could do everything in her power to make life as good as possible for her subjects. Just because her life had lost anything resembling joy or happiness doesn’t mean she would willingly let it happen to others, it would be a disservice to her people as well as everyone who helped her reach the throne.

“I realllly miss those days, sometimes I wonder, … if maybe … they would’ve been better off …. If I had just stayed frozen in that forest….” Emilia sighed as a tear rolled down her cheek, she had just looked up from the last page of the report and her eyes had locked onto her favourite painting. The painting depicted what was one of her most cherished moments, it was one of the last times all the candidates had gathered in the capital. The were all depicted as laughing and joking together by a painter who had witnessed how jovial and close they had gotten over the many adventures they had shared together, what was originally a competition that drove wedges between them turned into an journey that brought them close together, they had become friends.

As Emilia’s eyes went across the faces of each of her friends; the stories of their lives over the past 80 years came back to her, some brought tears of sorrow to her eyes while others brought slight bits of joy to her now dreary life.

Of course, Emilia hadn’t been present for every moment of their lives but she made sure to attend the most important such as weddings or funerals, the rest had to be pieced together by the correspondences she had tried to keep up through letters.

* * *

Reinhard was a hero who had always felt the need to shoulder the problems of the world upon his shoulders, if he found out that someone had suffered, he had always felt that it was the result of his own shortcomings. And so, it was natural the Reinhard rarely cried or showed weakness of any kind, there was once a time that one could say that Reinhard never cried. But there was one thing that made the aged former Sword Saint cry without fail, his wife’s grave.

The nearly 100-year-old lord of the Astrea lands knelt before the old tomb stone before him. Even after many years the guilt of what was probably his greatest failure still wrapped itself around his heart time and time again. He diligently cleaned every letter and every piece of the stone as tears ran down his face, the same tears he had when a messenger had met on the road home all those decades ago.

When Reinhard was still the Sword Saint, he had at one point been sent to guard the northern border against a possible incursion by Gusteko’s Mad Prince following a period of instability after Emilia’s ascension to the throne. When it had been determined that the threat had passed Reinhard was allowed to stand down and return home to his family, but he was surprisedly met about halfway on his route by a messenger carrying a letter bearing the crest of Astrea.

When Reinhard opened the letter; he felt a greater pain than he ever had in his life, greater than the death of his grandmother, greater than the death of his grandfather, even greater than his ostracization from his own family. For the first time in his memory, tears rolled down his face and he choked up as his eyes darted across the single, short message contained in the letter.

_Reinhard-sama_

_This morning Felt van Astrea was found dead in her bed, the cause of death is believed to be weakness exacerbated by childbirth and caused by acute malnutrition at a young age._

_We request your immediate return_

_My Condolences_

_Regent Heinrich van Astrea_

Reinhard had never believed that a single letter could shatter his life, but this one did. He had never recovered from that moment as Reinhard knew within his heart that Felt’s death was his own fault. He held the guilt of effectively issuing her death warrant the day he married her and finalized it the day he placed their son Rom within her. If Reinhard had never acted on his love for the candidate he once supported, than Felt would have been able to live a long and happy life, if only he hadn’t been so selfish.

However, Felts death wasn’t the only source of Reinhard’s guilt, his failure as a husband wasn’t the only failure he shouldered, he also shouldered his failure as a father. Even as Reinhard cleaned the tombstone, he was aware of his drunkard son trying to climb over the front gate so he could sneak back in from his night of drunken revelry. Reinhard knew from his own father that he could never allow Rom to rule the Astrea lands, he had spent his entire time with Felt undoing the damage caused by Heinkel’s irresponsibility. And it was because of this that Reinhard was forced to continue to cling to life, to beg the Od Laguna for just one more year; for no matter how much Reinhard yearned to die and leave this world, he couldn’t let his failures affect anyone else.

And so, as he was lifted back to his feet and nearly carried back into the main Astrea house, Reinhard once more was thrust back into the juxtaposition of wanting to die while begging for his life to continue.

* * *

Felix entered the room of his liege, who like on most days was laying down in bed with her face contorted in pain, green hair with streaks of grey messily sprawled across her pillows. Felix had followed the same ritual twice a day, everyday for the last 20 years. In both the morning and evening Felix would apply healing magic to Crusch and than over the course of the next few hours watch in horror as the cursed dragon blood of Capella did its cruel work. All wounds received by Crusch after receiving the blood would never truly heal, even healing magic would slowly unravel, meaning that wounds would reopen, and the damage would return.

Felix had supported his lady as she pushed herself to continue to lead the house of Karsten, no matter how much he had wanted her to just rest, he had always done his best to support her desires. However, after a few years she finally relented, handing the reins of her house to a relative as she could no longer physically keep up with what was demanded of her as Duchess.

However much to Felix’s dismay even after she stepped down as duchess, Crusch had continued to organize and direct searches for Natsuki Subaru from her bedside. Felix had urged her to stop as he felt that the stress and sadness caused from the constant failure didn’t help her condition.

But now wasn’t the time for him to think of the past, he needed to focus. Felix placed his hands on Crusch’s midsection and began to channel his healing magic for the second time that day, but he was quickly interrupted nought a few seconds after he began. Felix looked in surprise at the hand that weakly gripped one of his own, he turned to see her sunken and tired eyes looking up at his own. Felix called her name in a surprised and yet sodden tone as if he knew what she was about to say, “Crusch-sama?”

Crusch than began to weakly croak, “Felix …… stop …… let ….. me ….. die ….. I …… can’t …… take ….. this…….anymore…… ”

Tears started to run down Felix’s eyes as he began to desperately, yet selfishly plead with her to keep enduring the horrendous pain, “Crusch-sama you can’t go! What will I do without you? What would Old Man Will think? I know its hard but your so strong, you can endure it!” Then as he started sobbing images of his lady in her prime flashed before his eye, the strong and refined duchess who he had captivated him, the one he had pledged his life to serve. He saw her coolly declare before the strongest and greatest of the kingdom how she intended to kill the great dragon. He saw her strength when she rallied the expedition to slay the white whale, standing defiant before the great beast itself. Finally, he saw her strong eyes return when gluttony had been slain, the eyes of the women who had the resolved to fight until the bitter end to get what she desired.

But those were not the eyes he saw now, the eyes his lady had were ones that showed just how desperate she was to finally be free of the poison that had tormented her. The lady Felix had been proud to serve was no longer there, that day when the wretched witch had thrown her onto that water grate. The wounds from that day had subjected her to the constant pain of having her body pierced and torn open, it was this pain that had poisoned her. Slowly hammering away at her iron resolve, slowly twisting and breaking her once noble self into the hollow shell that lay before him.

And it was this realization that his lady was no longer there that made Felix decide to remove his hands from where her wounds were and instead use them to grip Crusch’s hand. As he knelt beside her bed holding her hand to comfort her, he slowly watched with tears running down his face as several neat puncture wounds opened up on her body. As multiple red swaths slowly spread along her white sheets, as her face grew paler and colder Felix resolved what he was going to do, become what he despised most in the world. When Crusch’s heart beat for the last time Felix simply stood up and walked from the room.

If one where to than watch from the window in Crusch’s room they would have heard a scream from outside and than see the renowned practitioner of water magic fall head first from the mansions roof, to land with a sickening _crack_ as a crowd gathered around the sight of impact. A bloody mess of red and pink covered his once pristine and white robes. Felix Argyll had chosen to die the same day as his lady, if she was willing to give up on life so would he, he would stand by her side wherever they were sent to in the afterlife.

* * *

A tall blond man stood in the reception hall of the Royal Palace after finishing his task of escorting an old friend from a deserted town in the Mathers Domain. He wore the pants of a Royal Knight of Lugunica but no shirt, his jacket had the sleeves torn off, and his face was adorned by a long and wild blond beard alongside his ‘x’ shaped scar. When he opened his mouth to speak a mouthful of razor-sharp fangs became visible.

“Oi you, how can my amazin’ self be ‘f service ta ya” he said to the terrified looking maid standing before him.

The young maid standing in front of him looked somewhat scared; but it seemed from how her eyes kept darting to look at the boring looking man watching them from the corner of the room that it wasn’t exclusively the blond man that terrified her.

The blond man caught onto this and assumed there was something this young maid wanted to say to him but felt she couldn’t in front of what he assumed was some kind of administrator. The blond man honestly didn’t really care about whatever this boring man could do to him, so he decided to have some fun and indulged the young maids unsaid request. So he turned to the boring man and added an angry tint to his voice as he spoke in his characteristic pattern, “Eh, even guys as strong as myself get sore feet every now ‘nd than, anywhere a guy can find a chair ‘round here?” even bearing his fangs slightly at the end to drive home the point that he wasn’t asking.

The boring man looked utterly terrified by the blond mans imposing aura, he lifted a quivering hand to point down a hallway before scurrying out of the room. The young maid caught on quite quickly to the intentions of the blond man and played along as well.

“Tinzel-sama, please follow me. As well, do you require any refreshments?” She than bowed to show respect to one of the most famous knights of the kingdom as she awaited his response.

Garfiel simply shook his head in disdain at this display before following the maid to arrive at a room with several fancy chairs, couches, and end tables. Garfiel sunk into a chair before putting his feet up on an end table opposite him in utter breach of etiquette. He rolled his head to the side and casually posed a question hoping for an amusing answer. “First of all drop this ‘Tinzel-sama’ shit, my amazin’ self has a name and its ‘Garfiel’, second what was it ya wanted to ask me so badly?”

“Well …….. Garfiel” The young mid hesitated before she addressed the knight so informally but soon recovered and continued, “The staff of the palace are worried for our queen, Emilia-sama. She’s seemed to be deeply bothered by something, yet she tries to hide it from everyone. We believe you may be the only one still alive that knows what happened to her. So, if you will allow me to make this selfish request, could you say what happened so that we may try to assist our queen?” The maid bowed as she made her request but after a long period of silence, she raised herself slightly and was caught in surprise when she saw the look in his eyes.

Garfiel Tinzel, one of the strongest knights in the kingdom; known for singlehandedly ripping entire vollachian warbands apart without more than a shield, was tearing up. He had a look on his face like he was trapped in some horrid memories, his mouth hung open in shock, his eyes blankly stared on some object far in the distance. At first when he tried to speak but no words came out, but than in a shaky voice he began the story of a terrible memory long ago.

“I-It was the death of Cap’n, my captain Natsuki Subaru. Soon before we headed off for th’ final meetin’ of the royal selection there was a ceremony in our houses gard’n, he ‘nd Emilia-sama got married secretly but hid the rings, wasn’t allowed by the rules of the selection. But then when we arrived in the capital, the Witch of Envy showed her face. Cap’n ended up slaying her as the rest of us lay on the street with the shit kicked out of us, but….” Garfiel than stopped as if he was reliving some incredible horror as he told the story. “It was like the witch lashed out from beyond the grave, one second Cap’n was fine, next we were watching him be strangled to death by th’ witches miasma. The Witch didn’t ev’n give us his body, she took it ‘nd there wasn’t a single damn thing ‘ny of us could do ‘bout it!”

Liliana was in complete shock; the queen of Lugunica, Emilia-sama had secretly married Natsuki Subaru, one of Lugunica's greatest heroes! She knew all about his amazing deeds like anyone who grew up in Lugunica in this day and age. But since she was a maid of the Royal Palace, and because Garfiel didn't seem to be done his story she did her best to hide the shock and let him finish.

Garfiel had started to get really worked up over this painful memory, his position had shifted from being laid back to leaning forward with his head being firmly planted in his hands. It was clear from his demeanor that he personally carried guilt at being unable to save someone who was so close to him. But having regained some composure after a brief pause, he spoke in a calmer and collected voice.

“Afterword’s four of us refused to accept that someone as amazin’ as Cap’n could’ve just died, it was crazy but it helped us cope with how we couldn’t help ‘im when he needed us most, after he had done all of that for us. Karsten, Julius, ‘nd Emilia-sama to be matter-‘f-fact, but both Karsten ‘nd Julius eventually died; Julius going kinda mad before kicking the bucket. Myself may have been similar but I have accepted that Cap’n is dead, my amazin’ self choose to live in a way that would’ve made ‘im happy to see. Emilia-sama refused to accept that though, he was just that important to her; I bet she ‘ven still has the ring he gave her when they married.” Garfiel’s somber mood lifted just a tiny bit when he remembers how panicked Subaru was when he had dragged his two bro’s to try and find just the right rings for his wedding.

The young maid was left aghast at the terrible story she had just heard, the slight mystery and fear she felt at her queen’s behaviour was instantly replaced with pity. She couldn’t understand what it would be like to live for a century having seen the love of your life brutally murdered right in front of you. She was thankful to Garfiel for finally removing the shroud of mystery around the queen, but she knew that if she stayed too long the palace administrators might get irritable and barge in.

“Thank you Garfiel, I must resume my other duties. However, if you require anything don’t hesitate to ask.” She than bowed and waited for Garfiel’s response before departing.

“Just give me a holler when that irritating loli leaves, she made my amazin’ self bring her all the way here without telling me one damn bit ‘bout why.” Garfiel exclaimed, back to his normal self as he left the room.

* * *

Emilia was stirred from her memories by the voice of an older maid calling through the door to her study, which was odd to her since it wasn’t yet time for her to sit in the dining room for a lunch she wouldn’t eat.

“Emilia-sama a visitor is here for you, she says she is an old friend”

Emilia wasn’t really paying much attention as the depression and melancholy of the old memories and stories still hung over her, friends long gone still hanging over her head like a rain cloud. She called back with an empty voice, “I’ll be right out” before slowly picking herself up from the desk that she’d been half-laying on while she recalled the past miserably.

The voice came through the door again however, “My deepest apologies Emilia-sama but she is rather insistent about seeing you in private…” than the voice was cut off by the door being forced open as a young girl marched in complaining, the maid left in her dust in abject horror at the breach of protocol and rudeness of the visitor.

“Betty has been hard at work, she isn’t going to wait around for some mopey child to give her permission to enter, in fact.” Beatrice exclaimed, without really distinguishing if she was talking to the maid or Emilia.

Although Emilia was surprised to see Beatrice for the first time after she just walked out 80 years ago without even saying goodbye, its just that Emilia was really not in the mood for any of Beatrice’s characteristic sass.

“Although I’m reaaally surprised to see you Beatrice, I’m just not really in the mood to be insulted. You know very well how hard I’ve been working to be a good queen, even though everyone I really cared about in my life left me behind…..” Emilia replied in her now normal empty and melancholic voice.

But Beatrice really didn’t like the tone this half elf was using and so she shot back with demeaning sass that she had normally only used with Subaru. “You should be a lot nicer to Betty, in fact. Especially after Betty found Subaru after you just moped around for eight decades straight without achieving much, I suppose.” Beatrice just somewhat casually dropped this bomb as Emilia shot straight up to a standing position and leaned forward with both her palms on her desk, ignoring the second slight fired at her.

“Subaru? Did you just say you found Subaru?” Emilia was speaking quickly in a voice laced with excitement, one that nobody in the palace would have heard as she hadn’t ever used it since becoming queen.

“Did your hearing go away in old age? Betty thought half elves lived for hundreds of years. But yes, Betty has found her Subaru and thought that he would want to see you, so Betty got the tiger boy to bring her here; so please accompany Betty, I suppose.”

Emilia was overcome with emotions, she was ecstatic at the prospect of seeing her beloved again, but she was also just a tiny bit afraid about what might have happened to him over the long time they’d been apart. But she had always known in her heart that she’d see her Subaru again, he had always managed to squirm his way through life threatening situations by the skin of his teeth. As well she knew that the witch factors should have extended his lifespan to match her own, meaning that she didn’t have to fear that he’d passed away from old age. And so Emilia decided to let herself be happy and enjoy this moment, she ran over to her night stand, opened a jewelry box and donned her wedding ring for the first time in nearly a century. She then picked up Beatrice and ran from the room with Beatrice screaming from under her arm, “Put me down right now! This is not what Betty meant when she invited you to accompany her, in fact!” Beatrice was making a face and flailing her limbs as she struggled in vain to escape Emilia’s arms.

As Emilia ran to the front door of the palace, she was met by the sight of the head administrator of the palace sweating profusely as he pulled at his collar across from a bored looking Garfiel. A young maid was also present as she bowed at the sight of her queen before speaking, “Emilia-sama are you heading out?”

“Yes, Liliana I will be gone for a few days, could you please make preparations and quickly. I won’t require a procession, Garfiel and Beatrice will accompany me.”

The young maid was at a loss for words at how energetic and excited her queen seemed, but she put two and two together with what Garfiel had told her and concluded it had to do with her queens former lover. She began to hurry out but was stopped by the words of the head palace administrator, “Emilia-sama you can’t possibly abandon your duties for several days, we also can’t possibly organize a protection detail for you on such short notice!” But than a low growl echoed across the room from Garfiel, making the administrator sink back into his own skin, “Atleast take Liliana with you!” he relented.

Then the group of Beatrice, Emilia, Garfiel, and the young maid Liliana set off in Beatrice’s dragon carriage towards their destination, Sanctuary.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading the second chapter! I ninja edited in a short bit about how famous Subaru is, it was pointed out on reddit that its kinda weird nobody recognized him so this seems like a good correction to make, thankyou to the two people there who brought it up.


	3. A Deal with Greed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This one was a bit hard for me to write, I hope it doesn't show too much in the quality but I'm excited for the next chapter and to write the ending of of this story. I promise I wasn't on crack when I wrote this.

Emilia sat in the carriage staring longingly out the window, absolutely bursting with excitement. She was on her way to see her Subaru for the first time in 80 years, who wouldn’t be excited to see their husband after waiting that long!

“Betty thinks that the mopey child is looking a lot happier now, in fact. But you haven’t thanked Betty yet, I suppose.” This caused Emilia to turn away from the window and face Beatrice, allowing her to see the incredibly smug smile Beatrice wore. It was true that even with the resources of a whole kingdom behind her Emilia had been unable to locate Subaru, yet Beatrice had done it seemingly alone. But this didn’t bother Emilia as she had never been too prideful of a person; she was just ecstatic that she would soon get to bring her husband home with her, she’d keep him close so she never lose him again.

“That’s right Beatrice, I’m sooooo grateful that you found Subaru! I’m really excited to see him and bring you two back to the palace with me!” Emilia than picked up Beatrice off her seat and gave her a massive hug.

Beatrice began squealing and kicking her legs, “Too much gratuity, too much! Betty is okay with less gratitude if it means she doesn’t get crushed, in fact!” Although this reminded Emilia how cute Beatrice’s antics were, she relented and let her go, but than as Beatrice hoped back onto the carriage seat she said something that made Emilia’s heart sink.

“Although Betty likes receiving some recognition for all her hard work, Betty feels she must make a small correction to what you said. Technically Betty didn’t exactly find Subaru, I suppose.” Beatrice looked slightly guilty when she said this, and even somewhat sad. Whether this sadness was due to her having to lie or related to Subaru’s situation was unknown.

Emilia however was completely devastated; the only hope she’d been given in nearly a century had just been taken away from her. Her eyes nearly instantly began to tear up, with the tears slowly starting to roll down her now pale cheeks. She then placed a hand on the bench behind her; slowly sinking into it as she blankly stared forward, right at Beatrice, the girl who gave her hope than seemingly crushed it.

Liliana was also completely shocked by this, why would this “loli” as Garfiel had referred to her as; give her queen so much hope and bring her so far from the capital only to completely squash it as they neared their destination. It didn’t make any sense to her; and because of this confusion in her, Liliana forgot her role as a maid temporarily and gave Beatrice a death stare.

“Both of you seem to have misunderstood Betty’s words, in fact! Just give Betty a second to explain!” Beatrice than turned from facing Emilia to face the angry maid sitting beside her, “And you stop glaring at Betty like that, you already share a name with a very annoying girl, so please don’t act in an annoying way as well, I suppose!”

Beatrice briefly paused to let the two regain a tiny bit of composure so they could both actually focus on the important things she was about to say instead of being enraptured in either their own sadness or anger.

“It’s true that Betty didn’t find Subaru, because Mother did. After searching the whole world for a long time Betty couldn’t find any trace of Subaru or the witch’s miasma, not even the area around the tower had any traces left, in fact! Eventually Betty began to run low on mana, even without using magic it would eventually run out without being able to replenish more from Subaru, so Betty had to get more. That’s when Betty encountered Mother. Mother seemed really busy with something but still oddly took the time to listen to Betty’s problems; which surprised Betty greatly, but made Betty happy nonetheless. It seemed that Mother knew from her book that Betty would come visit her, because Mother needed Betty’s help as well as yours, in fact.” Beatrice than gestured to Emilia to indicate that she had been refereeing to her.

“If Echidna knows anything about Subaru than I’ll gladly do what I can to help her” Emilia said somewhat weakly while still looking towards the floor of the carriage.

“It seems that Mother had meetings with Subaru before, outside the trials. Mothers obsessive greed for knowledge seemed attached to Subaru, and so she had been working for a long time trying to find him. Since Mother is Mother, she found that Subaru is currently residing in the parallel world he originally came from and has been ever since that day that Betty couldn’t save him.” Beatrice than also looked down towards the carriage floor with a sad expression on her face, it was obvious that the memories of the witch’s attack still bothered her too.

Although the idea that another Witch of Sin was obsessing over Subaru gave Emilia very mixed feelings she knew in her heart that if there was anyone who could find Subaru, it was probably Echidna, the Witch of Greed. But there was something about what Beatrice said that stood out to Emilia, she had used the term “parallel world” instead of saying “beyond the great waterfall”. Although Subaru had occasionally muttered the term every now and than, the only time he had said it with such confidence and as directly as Beatrice had was when he lost his memories back in the Pleidies Watchtower.

“Beatrice, why’d you say ‘parallel world’ isn’t Subaru from beyond the great waterfall? I know he rubbed off on you but I think its reallllly odd that you’d word it like that.” Emilia asked this with a now more puzzled demeanor, as Liliana just sat on the sidelines speechless. She was hearing terms like “Witch of Sin” and “beyond the great waterfall” being thrown around like it was normal, but it certainly wasn’t! She was simultaneously confused, afraid and worried about both what she had gotten herself into, and what kind of person Natsuki Subaru actually had been for him to have a personal correspondence with someone who called themselves a witch!

“Betty thinks that Mother would want to explain the details herself, I suppose. However, Betty has noticed that the annoying girl seems confused, Betty thinks that telling her how odd a person Subaru was may help her follow better, I suppose.”

“Awww Beatrice is trying to help Liliana, some of Subaru’s kindness stuck with you after all” Emilia cooed causing both Beatrice and Liliana to blush. “But I guess you’re right, a lot of things relating to Subaru seem reallllly odd when you’ve never met him.” Emilia than put a finger on her chin as she looked up at the ceiling, happy that she’d get to tell someone about one of her favourite people for the first time as she thought about where to start.

“Subaru is realllllly kind; he saved my life when I first met him and than all he asked for as a reward was my name, and to work as a butler for the lord who was backing my campaign for election. He cared a lot for all the people around him, he’d risk his life to help any of them out; He nearly got eaten by mabeasts once when he saved Arlam village, then again when he went to save a maid named Rem. But he was also a dunderhead sometimes who couldn’t keep his promises, he embarrassed himself in front of the whole royal selection once when he proclaimed himself a knight. But he was also one of the only people who could see me back than and not be afraid or hate me for being a half-elf.” Emilia started to go off on a tangent about all the things she loved about Subaru but than Beatrice stepped in.

“You’re missing the point of what you need to explain, I suppose!” Beatrice said with a hint of frustration in her voice.

“Oh yeah” Emilia said while being slightly seeming slightly downtrodden at how she had to switch to a topic that had always bothered her just a bit; the things she had never figured out and that he had refused to explain to her. “There were some odd things about Subaru that we never really figured out, he was always so trustworthy that we kind of just overlooked them. Subaru always had this realllllllllllllly good habit of always getting through things by the skin of his teeth; like he’d just show up with perfect timing and somehow everything would just barely work out. Sometimes he’d seem to know things that didn’t make sense, like he knew our old mansion like the back of his hand as soon as he arrived. Or how he knew Beatrice was in trouble when he first came to Sanctuary, but she was in the mansion. He claimed to be from an island nation east of here but there isn’t anything on our maps, nor have we ever found anything to our east besides the waterfall. Finally, he seemed to know way more about the Witches Cult then anybody else, he’d be able to find their Archbishops and defeat them, even though he wasn’t that strong. But that was just what made Subaru, Subaru I guess; so don’t worry when you hear about really weird things happening if its in regards to him, they’ll always work out!” Emilia finished her recount of what made Subaru, Subaru with a beaming smile on her face. Going through all the memories they made together on their adventure to the royal selection reminded her of why she had chosen to believe that he was alive on that day; because when Subaru’s around everything will always work out.

The carriage slowly rolled down the road towards Sanctuary in the distance as the ruin loomed menacingly on the horizon; the carriage stayed jovial however as Emilia and Beatrice became lost in some of their favourite memories of Subaru.

* * *

“Beako help, I’m really freaking out here!” Subaru said while he stood, so nervous that he was starting to shake a bit, his voice quivering slightly.

“You should calm down, I suppose. Betty believes in Subaru, in fact!” Beatrice than spun Subaru around and pushed him by the back out the door. “You’ll do fine, in fact!” Beatrice cheered him on as he left the room to walk into the garden of the mansion.

As Subaru walked out the mansion, he felt his pocket to make sure that the item critical to his current goal was still there. He than took a big breath before putting on an air of confidence as he walked determinedly towards a trial that scared him more than anything he’d faced before.

Emilia sat on a bench in the garden, feeling slightly confused. Earlier in the day Subaru had asked her to meet him at this specific bench, he had said that he had something really important to ask her, but he needed to prepare first. Emilia had been even more confused than, I mean what could he possibly want to ask her about that required her to meet him here after he had prepared. But I mean he had seemed so embarrassed and nervous that she couldn’t press him about it, he had seemed so determined and even cute so how could she! And it was this that led her to be sitting on a bench, basking in the warm sunlight as she waited for him to arrive.

As Emilia waited for him, she thought back to when she had really taken notice of how her feelings for him had changed, back in the Pleidies Watchtower. She remembered when they had first gotten into the tower how frantic she had felt when he wasn’t with her, she remembered how worried she’d been when Shaula carried his wounded body into the tower, she remembered how it broke her heart when he said he couldn’t remember her name.

And than Emilia’s old Subaru was back for a bit, but than gone again; after she had beaten the final trial of the Pleidies Watchtower, when everything should have been okay, it wasn’t because her knight was gone again.

When she had finally found him, beaten and broken in some vollachian field; Emilia had cried her heart out, she had held him tight and told him that he loved her, that she didn’t want to lose him again like that.

And so, this had lead them to going on many more of these “dates” that he’d asked her out on before; but these were different then before, her heart would flutter just a bit when they were together.

Like it was starting to now, when she saw Subaru exit the mansion looking even more nervous than he had earlier, she spied him out of the corner of her eye as he patted his pocket as if checking that something was there. She saw him take a deep breath and how confident he tried to seem as he walked over towards her. Emilia knew that he was still probably really nervous on the inside so she beamed him with the biggest and brightest smile she could manage as he sat beside her on the bench. As he sat down she heard him say “Emilia-tan is angelic as always, truly EMT!” She looked into his eyes and felt her heart stir and flutter even more than normal, she reached up with her hand to caress his face; but before it could get there he was suddenly on the ground, the nervousness that she’d seen earlier starting to break out across his face.

“Subaru what’s wrong?” Emilia suddenly got off the bench to kneel beside him as she felt worry rise inside her.

“Emilia ….. please stand back up….” He whispered softly but with a somewhat shaky and nervous voice.

“Huh?” Emilia was confused, she was just trying to help him and he was telling her to back away. None of this was making any sense to her but she did what he asked, it just made her a bit sad that he rejected her help.

But than seeing him look right up into her eyes from a kneeling position her heart caught in her throat.

She knew what he was about to do.

She saw him take a deep breath and than begin to speak.

“Emilia, when I first came to this world; I was lost, confused, and alone. You had lost something important to you and yet you still chose to help me, you chose to save me even thought you risked throwing away your chance to become queen. When I was falling apart, be it when I first came to the mansion or when I lost my memories in the tower you helped me, even if I couldn’t tell you what was wrong, you still did your best to help me. But I’m not going to ask you this because you saved me, I’m asking you this because I’ve fallen for the person you are, the person you’ve grown into since I first met you. It’s not just your beautiful smile, your cute ears, or the pair of eyes I could get lost in for hours. It’s the cheerful, happy and innocent girl who thought babies were made from kissing; It’s the girl who cracks me up with her words that nobody says anymore these days; It’s the girl who makes me want to keep going no matter how bad things are, just so that I can see her one more time.

Subaru than took out a box containing an elegant and expensive looking ring.

“Emilia, just Emilia; will you marry me?”

Emilia didn’t even answer she was so happy, as tears of joy ran down her cheeks she lifted Subaru up without even answering his question. She held him off the ground with her strong arms and hugged him like a teddy bear. “Subaru you dunderhead, I thought something was wrong.”

As she cried and hugged him with how happy she was she didn’t notice that he was beginning to turn a bit blue, “E-Emilia-tan can I at least know the answer before I’m crushed to death.” Subaru managed to croak while he was on the verge of being killed by Emilia’s love for the first time.

“The answers yes, of course its yes. I love you after all!” Emilia cried out in happiness as she unknowingly tightened her grip just a bit.

“E-Emilia-tan although I’m really happy too and really enjoy being hugged by you; you’ll be a widow if you keep this up much longer.” Subaru barely croaked out as he turned an even more concerning shade of blue.

Emilia put Subaru down on the bench as he loudly and raspily sucked in massive breaths, almost as if he had been deprived of air for a long time.

“Subaru, are you okay?” Emilia said with a thick layer of concern and guilt in her voice as she leaned towards her new fiancé as if examining his face.

Subaru however quickly jumped to his feet and struck a pose, “Do not worry Emilia-tan! Emilia-tan’s embrace is the best medicine for any injury…” Subaru than stumbled a bit and nearly fell to the ground, only to be caught by his new fiancé. “Just be a little bit gentler please.” Subaru said in a slightly quieter than normal voice.

Emilia could only giggle and smile at this before embracing again with her new fiancé, just this time a little bit gentler.

* * *

Emilia and Beatrice walked through Sanctuary after leaving Garfiel and Liliana behind with the carriage. Garfiel had complained about being a chauffer rather vehemently when they had disembarked, but than had been happy when Beatrice had asked them to not accompany them to the tomb. Liliana however had protested in the politest way possible at not being able to accompany her queen, only relenting when Emilia asked herself that she wait there.

“So that’s why Subaru had an odd sound to his breathing for a few days, I suppose” Beatrice said while pondering back on how her contractor had come back slightly beat up looking after proposing.

“Yeah I feel realllllly bad about that, I was just so happy that I forgot my strength I guess” Emilia said while looking down at the ring on her hand. It wasn’t the ring that Subaru had proposed to her with that day, he called this one a “Wedding Band” while Emilia just referred to them both as wedding rings. Although they both meant a lot to her, she preferred this one because it represented the promise they had both made to each other that day. It was because of this promise that they both had a matching pair, and it was because of this promise that Emilia cherished it just a tiny bit more than the wedding ring.

As the two entered the tomb something seemed off, they could both feel mana flowing through it once again. When Emilia had first been in Sanctuary she had destroyed the magic algorithm that coursed through the tomb in order to lift the barrier. When they had approached Sanctuary they hadn’t noticed any kind of barrier, and the mana definitely had a different feeling to it compared to the algorithm that had maintained the barrier.

But just when Emilia was about to mention something out loud, the world went black.

* * *

As Emilia blinked a landscape quickly came into focus, it was vaguely familiar to her as she’d been here once before. It was a grassy field with rolling hills, a single table with an umbrella and chairs; as Emilia looked at the two people sitting around the table one of them noticed her and began to speak to the other sitting at the table.

“Oh so it seems our attention whoring princess is done laying there waiting for someone to come and save her, its nice of you to finally join us.” It was Echidna, the Witch of Greed. She sat at the tea table with Beatrice beside her, looking slightly uncomfortable at the vocabulary her mother was using; around the same table there was one unoccupied chair seemingly left for Emilia’s use.

“Although I would consider it a gift to never have to see your horrid visage, or have it defile my dream castle ever again; sadly I need your help.” Echidna seemingly lamented at this as Emilia sat down to join the other two at the table.

However Emilia’s head was a flurry of questions, she couldn’t even react to how Echidna insulted her; that’s how much of a kerfuffle her mind was in. She decided that since Echidna needed her help she could probably get at least some information in regards to what was going on. “Echidna, why are we even meeting you here? Last I heard you were living in Roswaal’s mansion using a body Frederica had called Omega.” Emilia asked this with a genuinely confused look, remembering the conversation she’d had with Frederica when they’d met briefly at Petra’s wedding in the capital. Emilia began to drift off into thought before she was pulled back into the somewhat fake world she was in.

“Oh so you ask a question and than don’t even pay attention for the answer, are you that used to everyone being at your beck and call since you’ve become queen? Well I do guess that things will go more smoothly later if we can these pointless questions out of the way first. After you let my Apostle vanish from this world needlessly I was quiet perturbed you know? I may be a witch, but my maidenly heart didn’t like losing someone who was so fascinating, so useful, so important.” Echidna put her hands over her heart and swooned from side to side as she said the last few words. When Emilia looked over at Beatrice to see her reaction, she only shook her head at the ground as if she knew what was coming.

“I used my magic to search the world for where my oh so dear Apostle had ended up and you know where I found him? Nowhere! He wasn’t here!” Echidna’s voice was rising and gaining a tone that indicated that she was about to deliver some monumental discovery. “No matter where I searched with my magic, I couldn’t find him; yet through our connection due to his apostlehood I knew he wasn’t dead. It was a mystery I couldn’t solve, he was simultaneously nowhere yet still somewhere. I just had to know what was going on, even if the mystery involved both you and that wretched witch I just had to know. So I looked through the Tome of Wisdom and you know where I found him? Back in the parallel world he came from before he was dragged here against his will. But than I realized, why stop there; the pieces of his memories that I had indulged in just left me with more questions. His world had so many unknowns, so much potential, so many new things to learn about. So I spent many years rebuilding both the dream castle and harnessing it to be able to reach his world; but I ran into a few problems. The world he’s in now is completely devoid of mana, so I can’t run the algorithm myself while being in his world. Secondly the only person who both has enough mana to fuel it, and the magical aptitude to run it are sadly myself; meaning that I had to be the one running the magic algorithm. Finally since there’s no mana I can’t have a spirit go in my stead, meaning I can’t send my lovely daughter.” As Echidna said this she patted Beatrice’s head in an uncharacteristic show of affection. At this small show of affection from her mother, Beatrice seemed absolutely elated, as if this was the first time Echidna had acted like this towards her.

“So here I am having to ask for help from you, one of the last people I wanted to ever see again. And let me guess from that stupid and awestruck expression on your face, you have more questions than you had to begin with after hearing my answer.” Although Echidna seemed to be fairly irritated from the vocabulary she was using, there was a faint glint behind her eyes that hinted that she was secretly enjoying how she was getting to toy with Emilia.

Emilia was indeed incredibly confused; why did Echidna seem to care that Subaru disappeared, it defiantly was out of character for her to really care about anything. She had thrown Beatrice aside on a whim simply because it seemed interesting to her. Yet Echidna actually seemed slightly concerned about Subaru vanishing, there had to be something more to it; the Witch of Greed doesn’t simply do something just because an acquaintance of hers is in trouble. But was he even just an acquaintance? Echidna kept refereeing to him as her “Apostle of Greed”, a title that Emilia had never heard of before. What’s more Echidna also used the term “parallel world” when referring to Subaru’s home, why not simply say it was past the great waterfall like everyone else did.

“Echidna, what do you mean when you say ‘parallel world’? Is it another term for saying something is beyond the great waterfall? I’ve heard it a few times from both Beatrice and Subaru now but nobody would ever explain what it meant.” Emilia asked the first of her big questions as she silently prepared herself for some overly insulting and demeaning answer from Echidna, but the insults never came.

“Oh its all quite simple really. It’s not beyond the great waterfall, it exists entirely separate from our own world. No matter how far you walked or flew, even the strongest of dragons could never reach it. Natsuki Subaru was born in a place that knew nothing of our world and under most normal circumstances would never have interacted with us whatsoever. But one day he left his parents home to get something from a store and _poof_ the Witch of Envy pulled him here, across the divide that separates worlds. She used her power to stop the universe from correcting this anomaly and so as long as she lived he had remained here; when she died the universe corrected itself and he was pulled back to his correct plane of existence. So in essence a Parallel World is just another place that is supposed to never interact with our own.” Echidna said this with a very matter of fact tone and mannerisms, being completely calm and not really reacting to the horrid event she had just described.

Emilia however felt like an icy dagger was thrust right into her heart. She didn’t know that her own husband had gone through that pain, she didn’t know what must have been hidden behind his mean looking eyes that had always looked so kind to her. How was it that he’d been able to even occasionally talk about his family or homeland while seeming indifferent, just what other pain had he gone through so that losing his family didn’t completely crush him like it had her? But Emilia remembered, both of them had family again, they had each other; she was Subaru’s family just as he was hers. And so she steeled herself to keep going, once she got the information she needed from Echidna than she could move onto what she really wanted, to get him back.

“Echidna, why are you so concerned about Subaru? Why do you even care that he vanished? You didn’t bat an eye at leaving Beatrice alone for 400 years so why’d you suddenly spring into action to help Subaru.” Emilia looked over at Beatrice and saw that she looked incredibly sad, she was looking at the ground as a few tears began to run down her face, she clung to herself with her arms as she rocked back and forth ever so slightly. What made it worse was that she had a sense of dread, of anticipation on her face; it wasn’t her past that was bothering her, but like she was anticipating something, like she knew what Echidna was about to say. When Emilia looked back over at Echidna she was briefly frozen in shock.

The previously laid-back witch was now leaning forward, cradling her chin with her hands; she had a menacing smile and a stare that seemed to be looking right into Emilia’s soul. Echidna was the director of a performance watching the audience, and the audience was just about to see the best part of the performance she’d prepared. Echidna stood up from the table, walking a pace or two away and just stood there with her back away from the two. As she stood there a wind came to gently blow her long white hair, she than spun around with both arms raised and delivered her oration, an oration to tear apart the half-elf that she loathed so greatly.

“Why you ask? Why has my oh so maidenly heart been so enraptured with Natsuki Subaru, the only one who can satisfy my immense greed? Why? Because Return By Death is such an amazing ability! Being able to rewind time to experience a different flow of events only at the cost of experiencing death. It’s truly amazing don’t you see, being able to experience every possible flow of events from every possible decision, to top it off he even gets to experience every type of death. For a seeker such as myself it is the ultimate and only true power in this world. When I first met him I couldn’t control my own greed, I offered him everything; I offered him my body, I gave him a vow of my love, I even promised to guide him down a path to save the ones he cared about. But no, no, no he rejected everything; his own greed was so great that he wanted absolutely everything! But seeing that was just absolutely enthralling, captivating, driving; driving my greed to new levels! I just had to experience more, even if he would turn away from me, I would do everything in my power to get just one more taste of that ability. I gave him apostle hood, even if I couldn’t truly experience Return by Death like with a contract it gave me just a little bit, the tiniest morsel; but it only made me greedy for more! I followed him with magic, I followed from the shadows; to see those trained movements, the ones that only come from practice, TO KNOW THAT THEY COULD ONLY HAVE COME FROM DYING AGAIN AND AGAIN, REPEATING AND TRYING DIFFERENT PATHS!”

Echidna than stopped to catch her breath, returning from her state of mania. She walked back to the table and leaned in right beside Emilia, beginning to whisper the words that this girl least wanted to hear right into her ear.

“Do you know that Natsuki Subaru died several hundred times to bring you to where you are now? He died constantly under your watch because you were too weak to help yourself, to stupid to make the right decision, too fragile to face what you needed to. He died several times in the capital alone to the bowel hunter, all because you lost some stupid insignia. An insignia, some small trivial pendant meant that the boy you eventually confessed your love to, had to lie on the ground, slowly bleeding to death with his stomach sliced open, over and over again. Do you know that the boy you married was brutally murdered in the vary mansion you lounged around in, trapped in a situation where he could only die again and again; eventually breaking down completely at the hopelessness of the situation? Do you know that the boy you search for this very instant was killed so many times after you abandoned him in the capital that he wanted to give up on you and run away with that maid? Those and the hundreds of deaths that followed wouldn’t have happened if not for you. You sentenced that boy to bear so much suffering for the easy life you’ve been living since he disappeared, I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if he abandoned you after returning to his world and never wants to see or even remember your horrid existence.”

Emilia was left speechless, she just couldn’t believe what she was hearing; why would someone go through all of that for her, why would she make someone go through that for her? She couldn’t believe that someone as cheerful as Subaru, someone who could always smile and joke around, could’ve gone through so much pain. She didn’t want to believe it, it couldn’t be true, right? If anyone was killed hundreds of times their mind would certainly break, at least there’s no way they could be as happy and jovial as her Subaru had always been.

Echidna had backed away at this point and was standing over Emilia, as if to lord over her, ready to deliver another wound to her heart at any moment.

“You couldn’t honestly think that I’m making this up, could you? I mean just how do you think he got passed all those obstacles you faced? Divine Protection of Good Timing? Yeah right, someone who carried such a heavy stench of miasma as him could never have something as pure as a divine protection.” Echidna said mockingly, almost laughing at the fragment of hope and disbelief that Emilia held.

Emilia looked past Echidna at Beatrice. Emilia held just a tiny piece of hope in her glassy eyes; she wanted to ask Beatrice with her quivering voice to tell her that Echidna was lying. She wanted to hear her say that Subaru never went through what Echidna said, she just wants to hear the words “Mother is wrong, in fact.” But Emilia knew as soon as she saw how broken the great spirit was, that she’d never hear those words. Beatrice just sat in her chair with her arms pulling her short legs close to her body as tears ran down her face. All she muttered in a barely audible voice was “Betty is sorry she couldn’t help more, in fact.”

Emilia’s head slowly swiveled back to face Echidna, her eyes creating a trail of tears down her face. Her spirit broken at the idea that of what must have been actually going on inside Subaru as he dealt with the mental and physical toll of dying over and over again.

“Why didn’t he tell me….” Emilia weakly got out as she tried to hold herself together after the big revelation.

Echidna put her finger to her chin as if thinking about some unimportant trivia fact. “Well I guess the witch did grab his heart whenever he tried, and there was the time he resolved to tell you even through the pain. Just than the witch crushed your heart and he had to carry your lifeless corpse around until your deadbeat dad froze him to death. It was pretty soon after that, that he tried to run away from you with the maid and live out his days in another country.”

How could he have kept going after that Emilia thought, when she had seen the image of Subaru dying, she had been completely broken by it. For days she couldn’t do anything at all and everyday since than she’d been lost in a depression due to his absence. But she couldn’t imagine having to hold his body in her arms, knowing that he was never coming back, knowing that he was gone forever. Yet he had done just that and still been able to laugh and smile with her as if nothing happened. If he truly loved her as much as he said than that should’ve been impossible, was he lying to her ever time he said he loved her? Was there some ulterior motive to when he married her? All these thoughts started to rush through Emilia’s head she could do nothing more but curl up and sob, distraught at the idea that the only non-parental love she ever knew was a lie.

“Thank you, Beatrice, you’ve done your job well so far. Just I didn’t think hearing about Return by Death the second time would’ve bothered you that much.” Echidna spoke in a voice with a slight hint of surprise, showing that Beatrice’s reaction was at least not the one she’d expected.

“It still hurts Betty to know her contractor went through so much, I suppose. As well was it really necessary to hurt her so much? This could reduce the chance of getting Subaru back, I suppose.” Beatrice said this while wiping away the tears from her eyes.

“Hhhhhhhh, I guess I will have to do something unless we want to wait a few decades for this damn elf to sort out her feelings.” Echidna lamented as she honestly dreaded what she would have to do in order to progress her plan at a somewhat tolerable rate. She sat down in her chair and after staring at the mentally collapsing half-elf for a minute she began to speak.

“If your worried about that boy not truly loving you because he was able to move on so quickly after your death, then I suppose that you’re just truly stupid.” Beatrice shot her mother a look, leading to Echidna sighing before continuing with a slightly more comforting tone. “The first time I met Natsuki Subaru, I gave him the chance to ask whatever he wanted; do you know what he asked? He was only concerned with how to get back to you. After he offered the maid the opportunity to run away with him, she gave him a big motivational speech where she proclaimed more or less her love for him and how he was her hero, do you know what he said? He said he loved you. When he was falling apart due to the mental strain of trying to survive in the mansion, do you remember who saved him? Who calmed him down and made him keep going? It was you. So, I would say with certainty that his love for you is genuine, not that I could even try to comprehend why that boy thinks your anymore than some common whore; but he surely and does truly love you.” Echidna than paused a bit before continuing, “So if you still want to see him again than I believe we could be of some mutual assistance to each other.”

The sobbing half-elf than looked up at the witch with her still teary eyes; but those eyes were no longer hopeless and full of despair, instead they had a renewed determination.

“Don’t give me that damn look with those slutty eyes. If you’re ready than I’ll get to the actually reason why I brought you both here.” Echidna than waited like an impatient teacher until she had both of their full attention.

“So like I said earlier both Beatrice and myself will be unable to enter his world; I have to be here casting the spell and Beatrice would breakdown and disperse into pure mana if she were to go. So Emilia will be the one getting to visit our beloved Natsuki Subaru, while she is there Beatrice will be assisting both myself with casting the spell and Emilia with navigating around his world. Since I can’t readily access the immense mana stored in my original body, I will contract with Beatrice in order to allow her to draw my mana, then I shall use our contract to cast the spell through her. Beatrice will also form a contract with Emilia in order to experience her senses, so that she may guide you around his world. My spell will transport you somewhere in the vicinity of Natsuki Subaru, a place that he holds emotional attachment to; however he may not necessarily be there so be prepared to look around a bit. And finally I have two words of warning for you; firstly you’ll have a handful of hours at most before the spell consumes all the mana stored in my body, so your visit will have to be quick. Secondly, when Natsuki Subaru told me about return by death he cried like a little child just like you both did; so unless you’re willing to spend your whole time consoling a crying baby I’d recommend you avoid that topic. Unless there’s any questions lets get started.” Echidna than clapped her hands, showing her excitement at what was about to unfold.

“Echidna, I know I already asked this, but just why are you doing this?” Emilia asked, somewhat hesitantly as she didn’t want Echidna to slip into a Return by Death mania again.

“Oh the answers really quite simple, it would be incredibly disappointing to not get the ending of a truly intriguing story.”

And with that the journey across worlds began.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah the main thing that bothered me about writing this was both the RbD reveal alongside Echidna, she seems slightly OOC with her yandere-ish act.


	4. A Heroes Reunion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Earth

Emilia blinked and than all the white light was gone, instead replaced by scenery that was so incredibly foreign to Emilia that if you told her it was a dream she would probably believe you. But she knew it wasn’t a dream, it was Subaru’s home world that she had been sent to by the Witch of Greed, Echidna.

Emilia turned around in amazement, taking in all the unfamiliar sights around her. There were giant metal boxes that hurtled down the roads at immense speeds with passengers onboard, “So those are the ‘cars’ that Subaru always talked about when we’d ride a ground dragon somewhere” Emilia thought to herself. But Emilia pulled herself out of her thoughts, she was here for a reason, and that reason was to find Natsuki Subaru in the limited time she had to spend in this world. Suddenly a familiar voice reverberated through her head.

“Remember we should be somewhere that Subaru was emotionally attached to, so look around for something that stands out, I suppose.” That’s right it was Beatrice, the great spirit was currently communicating with her through the magic connection that held her in Subaru’s world.

“Hmmmmm, what about here is special enough that Subaru could be attached to it.” Emilia began to slowly turn around as she took in the scenery around her. “Houses, could one of these be Subaru’s?” But than as Emilia had turned about 180 degrees she found herself facing something that made her heart sink.

“A cemetery……” Emilia muttered with a very disparaged look on her face, “does this mean that Subaru is dead, is he so attached to this place because he was buried here?” Tears started to roll down Emilia’s cheeks as it started to sink in that she would never get to see her husband again. But Emilia started to hesitantly step forward into the cemetery, she came all the way here and she would at least see his grave if she could. She had lived with the uncertainty of whether he was alive or dead for 80 years and at the very least that would give closure to the question that had been troubling her for so long.

She passed by rows upon rows of tomb stones covered in symbols that she couldn’t at all decipher, until she recognized part of the string of characters that adorned one of the older looking stones, making her stop in her tracks right in front of it. They were some of the few characters in Subaru’s language that Emilia had learned.

When she saw them she sank to her knees.

Tears began to stream down her face as she just stared blankly at the stone.

She thought she had prepared herself for this when she saw the cemetary, but reality was more than she could ever be prepared for.

She read _Natsuki Subaru_ on the tombstone.

Natsuki Subaru was dead.

Uncontrollable sobbing was coming from within Emilia’s own head, before the sound of a big breath followed by a weak voice. “The tombstone says ‘Natsuki Subaru, you left us too early’ followed by a range of numbers I don’t understand…” Beatrice’s own voice than began to weaken as she struggled to hold back tears as well.

Beatrice remembered the annoying boy who showed at the mansion that day, he drove her absolutely up the wall. She threw him out of her library multiple times, mana drained him; yet he just kept coming back. Then he came back and burned the library down, even saying that he wasn’t “that person”. But he told her to choose him, and she did. He saved her from spending the rest of time in a library waiting for someone who would never come, declaring that he’d help her make up for those 400 years of life that she missed. And so she made him the one person that she cared about in the world and had been happy for the first time in hundreds of years. She cherished every moment that they spent together, she did everything she could to protect him in a world he was way too weak to be in. But than that day came, the day the Witch of Envy stole Betty’s contractor from her, the day Betty couldn’t protect her Subaru and he had to pay for the consequences with his life.

Subaru had been left in her care as everyone did their best to fight off what was probably the strongest being in the world. But Subaru did not make himself a burden, while she fired _minya_ at the witch; he carried her and dodged falling debris and shadows that were seemingly aimed solely at her. Although at the time Beatrice had been stupefied by the amazing and narrow dodges he seemed to pull off, she now knew what that they were a product of the disgusting power that the witch had bestowed on him, Return by Death. Beatrice had agonized since being informed about Return by Death by her mother over how many times he must have died during that fight alone, how many times he must have died since he was dragged to their world against his will.

And than there was his stupid plan that he used to beat the witch, waiting until Betty was out of mana and unable to move before sacrificing himself. If he had survived his attempt than Beatrice would probably have praised him for the ingenuity of it; showing the witch the love that she so desperately desired, giving her nothing to feel envy over which let her finally let go of the world.

All these thoughts ran through Beatrice’s mind as she could only stare at the blurry image of Subaru’s tombstone through Emilia’s teary eyes. Emilia herself was going through a similar reminiscence as she shared her senses with the great spirit.

The statement on the tombstone “ _you left us too early”_ truly resonated with Emilia, she truly regretted that she hadn’t gotten to spend more time with him. They had just become family a few days before he was taken from her, there were so many things in life that they hadn’t gotten to experience together. Emilia thought how she was going to bring up starting a family with him after the election ended, it had been really embarrassing than, but they were husband and wife so it shouldn’t be! Even if Emilia didn’t win the election they could of moved into a smaller cottage or home and raise their family. They’d have their own little army of quarter elves running around raising havoc thanks to their fathers personality, or being cautious and careful like their mother. Emilia even visualized what they may look like, would they get her silver hair and amathesyt eyes; maybe they’d take after their father and have his scary eyes and spikey brown hair. The possibilities had been endless in Emilia’s eyes, but now they weren’t. Those little quarter-elf kids would never be born, never get to run around, laughing and playing while Subaru and Emilia slowly grew old together.

None of that was going to happen though, because Emilia was here, staring at Subaru’s tombstone. Emilia had decided that she was going to take all the time she could to mourn his death. It’s not that she planned to ever forget him but she wanted to take the sight of his final resting place while she could, incase this was the only time she’d get to see it.

And so, she waited, kneeling before the tombstone as she cried, mourning the death of the only person she would ever love the way she did.

“Excuse me Miss, but do you know Natsuki-san?” Said an old voice from behind her, snapping Emilia back to the reality she had been tuned out of.

Emilia stood up and turned to face the old man who had been waiting behind her for an unknown amount of time. He had grey hair and brown mean eyes that seemed eerily familiar to Subaru’s, his calm demeanor made him seem completely unsurprised or unbothered by how oddly Emilia’s dress must have looked to him. Before Emilia had a chance to answer, Beatrice started to speak to her in the voice that only she could hear, echoing the thoughts running through her very own mind.

“He oddly reminds me of Subaru, I wonder if he’s a distant relative of some kind…” Beatrice than paused for a few seconds before dropping some advice, “Don’t tell him too much though, it could be bad for us if he thinks you’re crazy or something, I suppose”

Emilia had to answer the man though and didn’t want to just stand there looking shell shocked due to the surprising resemblance he had to Subaru. “Yes Mister, he helped me out a long time ago when I was realllly in trouble; but than he ended up disappearing. I came here to find him, but it seems I was too late……” Emilia’s voice trailing off as it became more and more laced with regret over not getting to see him one more time.

“Hmmmmmm I see, I see” said the Old Man. “You seem pretty beat up over seeing this tombstone so he must have been very important to you. I’m elated to inform you that although this is a grave for Natsuki Subaru, he is still alive. He is probably the only one in this city to both b alive and have a gravestone saying he’s dead.” The old man chuckled slightly at irony of it all.

This completely shocked Emilia, she had just accepted that Subaru was dead and now she’s been given hope once again that he was alive. To say she was not just shocked but also overjoyed was a complete understatement, but the man wasn’t done.

“This grave was put up by his parents about a few years after he disappeared, or so I heard. This all happened well before even my time, so take it with some skepticism. “The old man paused for a bit before continuing. “One day Subaru went missing out of nowhere, just disappeared of the face of the earth without a single trace left behind. His parents searched for him desperately for years, doing everything they could to find their boy; but no matter how hard they looked they never found him. All until one day he just shows up out of nowhere as suddenly as he had vanished. Unfortunately for him however his parents left town before he returned, having finally accepted that he was gone for good. They had moved far away and tried to restart their lives in an attempt to forget the son that had left them behind so cruelly. Any attempt he made to reconnect with them was just rebuked, whether they refused to believe it was really him or simply didn’t want anymore to do with him after he left that day isn’t known to anyone but them.”

Emilia was left speechless at this, even after enduring all the horrors of her world; Subaru had to return to his own only to have to face the abandonment of his own family for reasons beyond his control. It was an incredibly cruel fate for someone who had been forced to carry the mantle of hero, he had suffered so much and just when his suffering should have ended, he was given even more. To say that the world itself hated Natsuki Subaru wouldn’t have been an understatement. Emilia wanted nothing more than to hug him and tell him how thankful she was for everything he’d done up to this point. She’d come to accept that it was better to thank him rather than apologize for making him go through so much for her. However, the old man wasn’t done jut yet and pulled Emilia from her thoughts once again.

“But this is just idle gossip from an old man, if it makes you feel any better the Natsuki-san I knew was certainly not cruel, there’s no way I could believe that the odd old man I knew would ever do something like that to his parents if he had any choice in the matter. Was it possible that he did something stupid and that happened as a result, yes; but no way he did it out of malice. He always used to make me laugh when I was little with some oddity or another, like pulling a coin out of nowhere or attaching some odd word to someone’s name instead of an honorific.” The old man seemed to smile as he remembered old memories of his odd interactions with Subaru as a child.

Emilia let out a slight giggle at remembering all the little oddities Subaru had, like how he always used the “-tan” honorific.

“Anyways it has been nice to have someone to lend an ear to this old mans ramblings, if you want to find Natsuki-san he’s in a hospice in the Chiyoda district. Since you seem to be a foreigner here I’d recommend the Marunouchi line all the way until Yotsuya station. The station is around the corner so I wish you luck, young lady.” The old man than handed Emilia a token before waving goodbye and leaving the cemetery.

Emilia had a big smile plastered across her face as she happily skipped towards the station. She was going to be reunited with Subaru for the first time in 80 years, and it seemed to be a sure thing at this point. For the first time in so many years she knew exactly where to find him and how to get there.

“A hospice, I suppose…….” Beatrice quietly said, seemingly unintentionally but with a heavy hint of despair lacing her voice.

“What is it Beatrice?” Emilia asked somewhat surprised and a bit worried by the tone Beatrice had used. She didn’t know what a hospice was, assuming it was like a hostel from the similarity in the names; but since Beatrice seemed to know what the word meant Emilia wanted to know as well.

“It doesn’t matter, you’ll find out soon enough, I suppose”

* * *

“State your business.” Said a very bored looking receptionist.

Emilia had just arrived at the place where the old man told her she’d find Subaru. The journey to get there had been quite an adventure for Emilia. She had gotten to ride inside a giant iron snake called a “Subaway”, it was like a realllly long dragon carriage made entirely of metal. But it was a significantly quieter and smoother ride, and according to Beatrice they were travelling significantly faster than a dragon carriage could ever hope to; it supposedly would’ve taken at least an hour to go as far as they did in mere minutes. There had been some people who made odd comments about here being a foreigner and coming to japan to “cosplay”, it seemed to Emilia that these people were kind of disappointed at her for “cosplaying” yet she didn’t really understand why. All that she really cared about was finally being reunited with Subaru after so long, and she was on the very cusp of achieving that as well.

“I’m here to see Natsuki Subaru” Emilia exclaimed proudly and confidently.

She thought she heard the receptionist mutter “That’s a first” under her breath before she raised her voice and said “9th room on the 7th floor, just sign into the visitor terminal on your way up.

“The ‘visitor terminal’ is probably that coloured glass panel by the door over there” Beatrice said to Emilia. Emilia than walked over to the panel and froze, she had zero idea on how to write her name in Subaru’s language; the system seemed to have the user press on the character they wanted to enter, meaning that she couldn’t use her familiar lugunican glyphs.

Beatrice seemed to pick up on why Emilia wasn’t able to enter anything into the terminal, “You’re hopeless, I suppose. Just enter what Betty tells you to.” Emilia than followed Beatrice’s instructions and when she was done she starred at the result with some confusion.

“What does it say Beatrice? I recognize the first bit as ‘ _Natsuki’_ but what does the following series of odd-looking characters mean?” The characters that Beatrice had gotten Emilia to write confused her, the first one was familiar being Subaru’s family name, but the proceeding string looked neither like the first character nor lugunican glyphs.

“It’s called ‘ _katakana’_ , its another writing system used to sound out words in Subaru’s language, in fact. What you just wrote means _Natsuki Emilia_ , its common in this land for wives to take their husbands family name after marriage.” After hearing this Emilia felt a warm fuzzy feeling rise up within her, she was finally getting to practice a marriage custom with her husband after so long; something she missed out on doing back in her world.

While feeling this sense of euphoria Emilia beelined for the stairs, right past the elevator and began bounding up entire flights in just a few steps. She was incredibly excited; she had waited decades for this moment and before she knew it she was in front of his room. She recognized the characters adorning the door, _Natsuki Subaru_.

Emilia pushes the door open and bursts into the room in excitement, loudly saying “Subaru!” But she than stops when she doesn’t immediately see him.

The room she was in definitely wasn’t any kind of hostel room, it was nearly empty except for the most basic furnishings. The only thing unusual in the room was some kind of crystal screen that displayed a bunch of numbers and symbols while emitting bland beeps at a steady pace, its purpose unknown to both Emilia and Beatrice.

In the hospital bed in front of her a sleeping man who must have been nearly 100 years old slowly opens his eyes and turns his head to face her. As his eyes finally focus on her they open in surprise, as the rest of his body freezes in bewilderment.

Emilia softly calls his name again, but this time phrased more as a question as she is unsure about who this man in front of her is. But when she hears the man say “E-Emilia-tan?!?” with a voice laced with bewilderment and surprise all her doubts fade.

This old man is her Natsuki Subaru.

Emilia gingerly walks towards the bed that Subaru is in, unsure what to feel. She had finally found her Subaru, but he wasn’t how she remembered him. The Subaru she remembered was a young man who was healthy and energetic; yet the one who lay before her was ancient and sickly. She was simultaneously overjoyed at having finally found him, yet on the verge of tears because he seemed to be in the final years of his life. As she sat down in a chair right beside his bed looking down on him with glassy eyes but a weak smile; he looked right back up at her with a big smile and tears of joy starting to run from his eyes, like he had just been given the greatest gift of his entire life.

“I think I can remember Emilia-tan gracing my sick bed like this around when we first met in your world” Subaru said while trying to hold back the tears showing how happy he was to finally be reunited with her.

This was all too much for Emilia, she clung to his chest and buried her face in it, her back rising and quivering as she sobbed her heart out. After 8 decades of cursing herself for losing him she got to feel his touch again, even if it wasn’t just the same as she remembered; she got to listen to the sound of his heartbeat again, even if it wasn’t as strong as she remembered. Emilia finally had her Subaru back, even if he wasn’t just as she remembered; he was back and that was all that mattered to her.

As she clung to him sobbing, she felt his two arms reach around her to comfort her; she heard his voice, horse with age whisper into her ear “It’s okay Emilia-tan, where finally back together and that’s all that matters.”

After a few moments Emilia began to calm down and stop crying but she still clung tightly to his chest, like she was afraid that he’d disappear again if she let go. But she was soon startled into sitting back up by a violent coughing fit coming from Subaru, it made his entire frail body quiver and shake.

When it finally stopped, she looked down at him with a look of concern, but than he started to cry and his face had a look on it that seemed almost angry.

“I-I’m sorry E-Emilia-tan, I think I may end up breaking my promise again. When I got sent back here the Witch factors got destroyed. I-I……..” He than stopped before forcing out the last of what he had to say, “I don’t think we’re going to get to grow old together……”

Emilia was stuck watching as Subaru seemed to be beating himself up over them not being able to grow old together, even though this honestly broke her heart Emilia recalled the time she had comforted him when he was falling apart before; back when he had just started working in the mansion. So she got up from her chair and walked around to the other side of his bed, and gently climbed on. She lifted him up up a bit, shifting her legs so her lap was underneath him before putting him down again. She than gently stroked his head and told him in the gentlest voice she could manage, “It’s okay Subaru, although we weren’t together as long as we would have liked and things were realllly tough at times, I reallllly cherish all the memories we made together. No matter what happens and where you’re adventure takes you to next you’ll always be with me here.” Emilia than placed her hand on her chest, overtop of her heart before continuing, “And I’m sure no matter what happens I’ll all always be with you here.” Emilia than moved her hand from above her own heart to rest ontop of Subaru’s. “So it’ll be alright, okay? No matter what happens I’ll always come find you, so you don’t need to be sad.” Emilia than looked down and tried to give him her biggest smile as her eyes began tearing up and a few ran down her own face.

As Subaru’s breathing slowly calmed down and his crying stopped all Emilia could think about was that Subaru was still the same after all this time; he was still just the same scared boy she had met so long ago.

“Emilia-tan how are you here by the way. You seem like such and angle and I’m really happy, but are you even real or just a dream?” Subaru chuckled to himself as he said this.

“Oh Echidna helped us get here!” Emilia exclaimed, happy that the atmosphere in the room was shifting away from being as depressing as it was.

“Echidna……. Wait you said ‘us’, who else is here with you?” Subaru was initially cautious when he heard Echidna’s name, but than grew excited when he heard the mention of someone else coming to visit him.

“Uhhhhm, well, she isn’t exactly here but Beatrice has been seeing through my eyes and hearing through my ears; I can hear her, but she can’t speak to anyone else. I kinda almost forgot about her after I saw you, I’m sorry Beatrice.” Emilia said entirely out loud to emphasise that Beatrice was effectively present in the room.

“Betty is not happy you forgot about her, in fact! But Betty doesn’t want to waste her chance to talk to her Subaru, so Betty won’t be too angry right now, I suppose.” Beatrice said to Emilia.

“Beatrice wants to pass on a message so I’ll tell you what she wants to say, she can hear you just fine though so just speak normally, okay?” Emilia informed Subaru how Beatrice would communicate with him, she wasn’t upset at all about having to be a relay between the two since she wouldn’t have gotten this opportunity to begin with without Beatrice’s help.

“Beako is here too!” Subaru exclaimed with an excited look on his face which soon grew sad. “Beako I broke my promise with you too; I promised to give you a lifetime of memories but we only had a few years together, I hope you can forgive me.” Subaru sounded sincerely regretful about his failure to make up for Beatrice’s 400 years of nothingness.

“Betty values the memories she has of Subaru more than anything Betty missed out on while in the library, in fact. Betty is also glad to find her Subaru again, and even see his world; so don’t worry, Betty won’t punish Subaru too badly for breaking his promise, I suppose.” Beatrice said through Emilia, but only Emilia knew that Beatrice sounded ready to break into tears the whole time.

“Anyway Betty would like to know what Subaru has been up to since he came home, I suppose” Beatrice said once again through Emilia, her voice returning to normal.

“Hmmm, well it has been a lot more boring than when I was with you guys.” Subaru chuckled a bit before continuing, “It was actually pretty lonely at first, I’d gotten so used to being in Lugunica that being back in Japan required me to adjust all over again. I tried to find my parents but they didn’t seem to want to believe that I was really me after I had disappeared for so long…” Subaru seemed fairly upset over his parents attempt to forget about him and had to pause for a bit to collect himself. “I was homeless for a bit, sleeping in a park for a few nights but I managed to score a job at the convenience store by my old house; the owner recently had a newborn son and didn’t want to work nights anymore. I used that money to get a roof over my head and food to eat, I was starting from zero for the third time in my life.” Although the times definitely weren’t good Subaru seemed to remember them fondly, they showed that he’d become more resilient from his Lugunican adventures; the speech he got from Rem all those years ago had truly changed his life. Subaru than recalled the last series of events that brought him to where he was, “During the hours of the day that I wasn’t working I began writing a book about when I came to Lugunica and all the adventures I had with you guys, it ended up selling really well and I got to move to a nicer home and didn’t have to work at the convenience store anymore. It’s just that when I told people it was a true story they laughed it off like a joke, when I told them I was serious they thought I had more than just a few screws loose. My life was pretty empty after that, then about 10 years ago I had a massive heart attack and ended up here, and I’ve been here ever since.” Subaru gestured to the surrounding room to indicate that he was finished, seemingly glossing over his massive health issue as if it were just a minor speed bump in his life.

Emilia didn’t originally clue into what a heart attack was as they weren’t a common ailment in Lugunica, even when they did rarely occur they were fairly simple for even a novice healer to fix. Beatrice however knew exactly what they were and how serious it was for Subaru to have one, due to him telling her about how his grandfather had died. “Heart attacks are a very dangerous ailment in Subaru’s world, they’re one of the leading causes of death, and the reason some of his own relatives have died, I suppose.” Beatrice told Emilia with a solemn tone, her contractor had gone through so much suffering for them and even when he finally got to go home, things hadn’t exactly gotten better.

“Wait Subaru , that realllly doesn’t sound good; you can’t just traipse over something that severe!” Emilia remarked in concern, her Subaru really hadn’t changed with how little he seemed to care about his own well being.

“Who even says traipse these days……..” But Subaru was just happy at how his Emilia seemed to be just the same as when he last saw her.

“But at least you must’ve had lots of visits from your family and friends to keep you company all this time!” Emilia tried to turn there conversation back towards something positive because it seemed to be turning sad and depressing yet again. However the idea that Subaru had started a family without her definitely made her heart sink.

“What family? My parents weren’t around when I came back and my wife was a whole world away.” Subaru seemed to find this depressing topic somewhat amusing as he chuckled to himself, but both Beatrice and Emilia found it incredibly sad and depressing. Emilia however let herself be a tiny bit happy that Subaru had stayed hers after all that time just as she had stayed his.

“Anyways enough about me, what happened to everyone since I’ve been gone?” Subaru exclaimed this seemingly innocent question with a genuine sense of curiosity. But Beatrice quickly interjected before Emilia could answer anything,

“Don’t tell him the truth, it might crush him after all he went through for us.” But even Beatrice knew that Emilia wasn’t exactly the best at lying or covering stuff up so this was definitely a long shot.

“Uhmmmmm well everyone is doing just great, all fine and dandy, yeah. Soooooo much has happened that you wouldn’t even believe! Garfiel’s become one of the best knights in the kingdom, he even had Julius as his teacher! Reinhard and Felt got married and had the most beautiful baby boy; Crusch and Felix are still together too. I became queen and got to free all the elves and Beatrice even got to spend time with her mother! Everything has been going just amazing, you left us all in a great place!” Emilia finished after speaking incredibly fast, completely not realizing that Subaru didn’t buy her deception. Emilia felt bad for lying but also felt bad as she remembered the truth behind most of those events.

Emilia remembered how shocked yet eerily reminded she was when she saw Reinhardt after Felts funeral, the once strong and gentle man seemed to be a complete wreck that was barely holding itself together. When she saw Reinhardt well up to the verge of exploding into tears she saw a reflection of herself, she knew what Reinhardt must be feeling just as she had felt during the first few days after Subaru disappeared.

But Subaru dragged her out of her thoughts with a reveal that she hadn’t deceived him with a weak smile, “You know Emilia-tan, lying doesn’t suit you; you’re just always too happy and innocent to make it believable. But if you don’t want to tell me I won’t press.”

He wasn’t right about her being too happy or innocent to lie because those things had been stolen from her when the world took him. He also had no right to say such a thing when he had lied to everyone about how much he had suffered to help them, even if the witch didn’t let him it still didn’t change that he had been so willing at times to place all the suffering upon his own shoulders.

“You know Subaru, you shouldn’t criticize others for lying when you hid return by death from all of us for so long.” Emilia said quietly, causing Subaru’s face to contort in fear as his eyes darted around the room. His whole body seemed to tense up and begin to tremble in an instant as he brought his arms up to protect his chest.

“Whats wrong Subaru?!?” Seeing how Subaru suddenly seem to fear for his life, both Emilia and Beatrice freaked out and called to him in near unison; in Beatrice’s case, she called out regardless of the fact only Emilia could hear her. Emilia tried to calm down Subaru’s trembling body as his mind slowly seemed to return to reality from the realm of fear.

“Are you okay Emilia? Nothing feels wrong with your heart?” Subaru hurriedly asked her with a somewhat desperate undertone to his voice.

“Yes, Yes Subaru, I’m okay. You’re the one I’m worried about, everythings okay; nothings going to happen to any of us” Emilia asked with a look of concern in her eyes due to Subaru’s strange behaviour.

“I’m okay, I’m okay; It’s just that this would be the first time theres been no consequence from it being mentioned. Every time I told someone either my own heart got squeezed or theirs got crushed. The only time I managed to tell someone completely was when I told Echidna; but even than the Witch got her vengeance. She killed everyone in the sanctuary and tried to trap me in her shadows, I only got out of that from stabbing myself to death…..” Subaru’s eyes seemed to still be tinted by fear from recalling the memory of Sactuary being swallowed by shadows.

Emilia and Beatrice were silent, Echidna had left out quite a few details on just how return by death had affected Subaru. They didn’t know about him being forced to commit suicide in order to use its power; they also didn’t know how deep of an emotional scare it seems to have left in the boy, even after all these years.

Subaru than looked up, straight into Emilia’s eyes; there were tears beginning to form in his own as if he knew something was on the horizon. As he did this some white cracks seemed to appear in the walls of the room, exactly in sync with how Beatrice’s presence seemed to be weakening in Emilia’s mind, their time together was beginning to end in more ways than one. Unnoticed by Emilia however was how the rhythmic beeping of the machine in the room was starting to grow ever so slightly irregular.

“There’s something I want you to remember….” As Subaru was speaking he seemed to grown more and more short of breath, but he continued none the less. “No matter how many times I died, how much it hurt; I’d do it all again to save you, I’d do it all again if it meant I got to spend just a minute longer with you. To me being here now it was all worth it, to marry my one true love and even get to see her one last time is a gift I could’ve never hoped for…..” As the last words left his mouth, his face contorted in pain and he clamped his eyes shut. Then just as soon as he began writhing in pain, he stopped and his body went limp.

“Subaru! Subaru! What’s wrong?!? Emilia exclaimed in horror as she watched the love of her life die before her eyes for the second time. She had placed her hands on him to apply healing magic the second she saw him flare up in pain, but nothing came of it. Since there was no mana, Emilia could do nothing but vainly try to heal him to no affect.

“It’s pointless, Subaru is gone……” Beatrice muttered in a trembling voice, evident that she was holding back tears before Emillia felt her presence completely disappear.

“NO YOU CAN’T GO, please don’t go. I finally got to see you again and now you’re leaving me behind again; I don’t want to be alone anymore; I don’t want to say goodbye. So please Subaru, please don’t leave me behind…………….” Emilia desperately pleaded with Subaru’s lifeless body, she looked down with tears pouring out her eyes as she desperately clung to it, lamenting how short their reunion was.

As she knelt there with her face buried in his chest, her arms giving him the last hug of his life, the cracks spread and the whole world seemed ready to shatter.

“ECHIDNA PLEASE, I’M NOT READY TO GO” Emilia was now pleading with Echidna to let her stay in Subaru’s world.

“I DON’T KNOW WHAT I’M GOING TO DO WITHOUT HIM; BEFORE I KNEW HE WAS ALIVE, BUT KNOW I KNOW I’M NEVER GOING TO SEE HIM EVER AGAIN” Emilia cried out to the whiteness that was beginning to swallow her up, as if hoping it would pity her and slow down, even if just slightly.

“So please, just a few more minutes, I just want to hold onto him for a little longer…..” Emilia’s voice now was reduced to a whimper as she accepted that her time with him had ended.

The world had turned completely white and Emilia now no longer could feel his body in her arms. The story of Natsuki Subaru and Natsuki Emilia was now over, he remained in his world and she returned to her own, never to meet again.

* * *

Beatrice sat alone on the grass of the dream castle, she had pulled her legs close to her body and buried her face into her knees. She was softly crying to herself when a figure clad in black walked up to her. As this figure sat beside her, they placed an arm around Beatrice in an act that was completely uncharacteristic of them.

“Mother?” Beatrice looked up to see that it was indeed Echidna who was attempting to console her.

“You’ve helped me out Beatrice, I’ll be a mother just for a bit; think of it as repayment for your role in this.” Echidna said somewhat awkwardly as she tried to console Beatrice, making it very clear that this wasn’t exactly natural to her.

“Betty wanted more time with him, he made a promise to give Betty a lifetime of memories and Betty just wished that he could’ve been able to keep it….” Beatrice than clung to her mother, burying her face into Echidna’s dress and continuing to cry. This initially seemed to repulse Echidna, but she quickly suppressed it as she held Beatrice like a small child, caressing the back of her head as she cried.

“It’s okay Beatrice, you can tell me whatever you need to get out” Echidna said in an uncharacteristically warm voice.

“Betty just wanted to be with her Subaru a bit longer….” Beatrice than began to calm down just ever so slightly as she added her characteristic “I suppose” to the end of the sentence.

“You can take as long as you want to process this Beatrice, but when you’re ready I’d like to hold you to you’re end of the contract to share your memories of what happened with Mother” Echidna said this with a slightly evil smile on her face, one that Beatrice couldn’t see from where her face was buried.

Beatrice just slightly nodded in response to what she heard.


	5. Until Death Do Us Part?

“Huuuuuuh………..haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah…………………huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuh………haaaaaaaaaaaah”

The room was quiet except for the faint sounds of labored yet weak breathing. Visually however there was a flurry of spirits congregating around an aged half-elf, lying in her bed late at night. Her forehead was covered in beads of sweat du to her heavy fever, her breaths labored yet shallow due to how weak she had become. The spirits congregating around her where frantically applying healing magic on their own volition to try and keep the person who had been talking daily to them for the last 800 years alive.

The queen of Lugunica, Emilia; had grown extremely ill, not due to a plague or pandemic but due to her advanced age. She had ruled the nation for roughly 800 years and had given it her all, no matter how sad she had been due to personal matters, she had always made sure she focused on what needed to be done for the kingdom and its peoples sake. When she had inevitably grown weaker and infirm due to her immense age, old even for a half-elf; the palace had insisted that he had round the clock medical treatment. However, she had refused this because she didn’t want people fusing over her all night long; she had merely told them “I’m not ready to give up working on this kingdom, a position that so many of my friends died to help me reach; so don’t worry, I’ll still be here in the morning.” And so, every night she would dismiss the doctors and servants who worried for her health. However tonight was different, she had still dismissed them, but she seemed to be getting worse. A fever had set in not long after they had left and it was vastly harder for her to breath than normal, however she continued to fight to stay alive; she wanted just one more day to work on the kingdom; one more say to put in the effort to show the friends she lost that it had not been in vain, one more day to avoid the end she feared so much.

As if sensing this determination, a flock of minor and quasi spirits had come from the palace garden to surround her. These were the same spirits that she had made sure to talk to every day since she first came to the palace, even when she eventually needed help walking, she had still gone out to meet them. Now as little balls of light they fluttered and flew around her bedridden body, desperately applying healing magic as they tried to grant her wish, to stave off the end for just one more day.

Emilia’s vision and mind were very hazy as she seemingly drifted between some far away memory in her mind and the reality surrounding her. However, something soon caught her attention, there was a person standing by the door that she recognized instantly, despite not having seen them for many centuries.

The person who seemed as real as anything else in the room slowly walked towards her, with silver hair swaying and a concerned look on her face. She sat on the edge of Emilia’s bed, oddly the blankets nor the bed reacting at all; almost as if she were weightless or not really there at all.

“Long time no see Emilia, but it looks like you’ve seen better days.” The women said with a somewhat solemn expression on her face as she looked down at her dying daughter.

“Mother………..Fortuna?” Emilia weakly got out between labored breaths, but her voice still managed to convey a sense of astonishment at the surprise of seeing her mother who had died in the Elior forest long ago.

“You’ve definitely changed a lot since you were the little girl I watched over in the forest Emilia. Who could’ve guessed that you’d go from living in a tree to being the queen of Lugunica.” Mother Fortuna stopped to wipe a single tear from her eye, causing it to fall before completely disappearing when it hit the bedsheets. “You know, you made me really proud; I could only have dreamed that you would grown up into such a determined and hard-working girl. But why are you still hanging on? You’ve worked so hard, done so much; all your friends left long ago and yet you hang onto this world, why not let go and rest?” Mother Fortuna than looked down on her daughter with concerned and worry across her face, she leaned in closer to better hear her answer when she saw tears start to form in the corner of Emilia’s eyes.

In a voice so weak that it should have been inaudible Emilia responded as she cried for the first time in a long while. “There’s still so much I have to do, they’d think poorly of me if I gave up or stopped before everything was perfect, so I have to keep going.”

“Emilia…..” Mother Fortuna said this in a voice that was almost disappointed but more like she felt that she needed to correct a grave misconception in what her daughter just said.” Nobody would think poorly of you after you worked so hard; things can never be perfect, there’s always going to be something, somewhere that needs fixing. And you’re suffering so much every day, so I’m certain that nobody would judge you if you decided to rest now and leave things to the next young one to take your place.

This seemed to hit home as Emilia began to cry harder, almost as if there was a greater reason to why she refused to let go. Mother Fortuna began stroking her head, exactly like what she’d do back in the Elior forest when Emilia was a child and had woken up in the night from a nightmare.

“Mother Fortuna, I’m scared; I don’t know what’ll happen if I let go, I don’t want to die…..” Emilia seemed to get more and more panicked and even desperate as she spoke. However, Mother Fortuna didn’t seem bothered by this whatsoever and continued with a calming and motherly tone.

“Dying isn’t all that bad you know; it can be very peaceful compared to being alive; it’s almost like jumping into a lake during a rainstorm. One second everything is crazy and chaotic, the next it’s just peaceful and calm. As well Emilia, you had lots of friends; so I’m sure that no matter what happens or where you end up, that you’ll never be alone.” Mother Fortuna paused and then changed from a motherly voice to a more jovial one, “By the way Emilia, I forgot to scold you for breaking your promise and marrying that boy; that was very naughty of you.” Mother Fortuna pointed her finger at Emilia as if scolding her as she joked.

Emilia giggled at this and seemed to calm down, accepting what she’d do with her heart. “Thank you Mother Fortuna, I think I know what I’ll do now.” Emilia than smiled at her mother, with Mother Fortuna returning the smile before she vanished into thin air, as if she’d never been there to begin with.

Emilia slowly closed her eyes and as if sensing that her wish had changed the flurry of spirits dispersed from the room, leaving to let nature take its course.

“Huuuuuuuuh………..Haaaaaaaaaaaah……..huuuuuuuuuuh……………………………………………………………………”

And with that Emilia, Queen of Lugunica let out her last few breaths before laying still, silent, and at peace. Emilia, Queen of Lugunica had died.

* * *

Emilia lay in a familiar patch of grass; her eyes closed as she basked in the warm sunlight; it felt so nice and peaceful to her that she wanted to stay like this forever if she could. However her forever was cut short to be only a few ten’s of seconds long by a voice calling her name.

“Heyyyyyyyyy Emilia-tan, over here!” The boy yelled to her, seemingly trying to get his attention.

Emilia slowly opened her eyes and turned to face the voice. There was a boy sitting on a bench waving his arms and calling to her; he had short and spikey black here, and a pair of mean looking eyes.

Emilia sat up to face the boy, noticing as she did that none of the same aches or pains came. As she took stock of her body, she noticed that it felt both stronger and younger than it had mere moments before in her bed. It reminded her of what it was like back during the royal selection, the time of her life that she had come to cherish the most after she’d lived for so long.

Everything seemed off to Emilia, this wasn’t how she imagined dying. To her death was supposed to be cold and empty; an eternal existence as nothing in a cold void. But this was different; it was warm, pleasant, enjoyable.

What was more shocking to Emilia was how she didn’t seem to be alone, there was someone else here with her, someone that felt incredibly important to her in life.

Emilia finally managed to clear the haze of death from her mind, she remembered who this boy was. He had been one of the most important people in her life. It was his memory that had been a primary reason in driving her on to keep fighting to live, she hadn’t wanted his sacrifices to put her on the throne to be in vain. And so after many centuries she finally got to call out to him once again.

“Subaru?!? What’re you doing here?” She said, her voice highlighting both her excitement and surprise at seeing him after all this time.

“Well Emilia-tan had declared that she’d find me no matter where I ended up so I decided that it would be easier if I just waited for her right here.” Subaru exclaimed as if it were common sense.

To this however Emilia could only close her eyes and beam her signature angelic smile, she couldn’t possibly express how happy she was at finally getting a reunion with him after these years. She got up and walked to join him on the bench, each step brining her slightly closer to the goal she had strived towards for so many years. When she got there, she could only continue to smile as she got to look into the eyes she had longed to stare into for so long. She reached out her hand to caress the face that she hadn’t felt for centuries. With her other hand she got to play with the wedding band that had only gotten to be with its partner for a few days before their separation.

As the two basked in the warm sunlight once again, sitting on their favorite bench Emilia could only think about how after everything that happened she had no more regrets.

It didn’t matter that she died, for she wouldn’t be alone.

She may have an infinite amount of time to fill, but she had the one she wanted to fill it with her.

They may have missed out on spending their lives together, but at least they could spend their deaths with each other.

The two finally got the end to their adventure that they had always wanted yet feared wouldn’t come, they got the end that meant they’d be together.

And thus began their long awaited reunion, one that wouldn’t be stolen from them like before; for now they had eternity.

_Fin_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been a fun ride writing this, I hope you guys enjoyed it. After all they've gone through we've finally reached the grand finale

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for getting to the end of the first chapter, I hope you enjoyed it as well as the next 3 to come. Onwards into depression I guess


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